


Mason Jars 1999

by gzdacz



Series: Mason Jars [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, Friendship, Gen, House Elves, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mentor Severus Snape, POV Alternating, Past Child Abuse, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26749012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gzdacz/pseuds/gzdacz
Summary: Sequel to Mason Jars. Harry and co. continue navigating their post-war realities. This time, they have to deal with career ambitions, house elves, repression being maybe less than good for you, and some Very Dramatic housemates. Also, Snape gets like, 10% better at the mentoring thing.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley
Series: Mason Jars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947370
Comments: 51
Kudos: 150





	1. February 15th, 1999

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a sequel, and takes place about a month and a half after the conclusion to Mason Jars -- if you haven't read the previous installment, I strongly encourage it, because you will feel quite a bit lost otherwise.
> 
> The story will be updating regularly, every Thursday and Sunday. Without further ado, enjoy!

**February 15th, 1999.**

Harry was dying.

The venom thrummed in his veins. It turned patches of skin a shimmering cold, the sort he could see. The glow tasted like iron. He'd been hit by a bike once, when he was little: Dudley rode it like a madman and Harry didn't think he'd meant to, that time, but he'd dislocated Harry's shoulder and Aunt Petunia had to grumble her way to the A&E in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. He remembered that moment when time slowed, when he could see the bike coming closer, when he _knew_ it would hit him but knew too that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Inevitability should be comforting but wasn't. Fighting made him brave. This was worse, this was terrifying in a new way, this was more awful than the troll, than the acromantulas, than the three-headed dog and the one-headed dog of Aunt Marge's that had chased him around the garden once. The venom had spread through his body by now. He was going to die on the cold floor of the Chamber of Secrets and he knew it and didn't want it and couldn't stop it.

He woke with a shiver of terror, wet-cheeked and gasping, and for a long moment too afraid to open his eyes. He feared he might see a young Tom Riddle standing at the foot of the bed. The Basilisk's body, rigid with death. Ginny splayed in a puddle, loose with fading life. His own robes, torn and stained with blood.

He listened to the waves. The first few nights he'd spent here, every crest had been a lull, and he'd slid into a downy sleep cramped with loose-threaded dreams he wouldn't remember in the morning. He should have known the respite wouldn't last, but had fooled himself into thinking things had changed.

They had, he supposed. He used to dream constantly about green light in the Forbidden Forest, about Remus and Fred dying, about the wrinkled, sanguinary mass of Voldemort's soul. Now, he found himself plunging into memories more and more distant, seemingly at random: one night, he might be crying in soiled sheets in his cupboard at age four; the next, clutching at Cedric's corpse like he expected him to rise from the dead and save them both. It made sense to relive Sirius's death or Dumbledore's final moments, he supposed, because whatever expiration date grief had, his had not reached it; but he hadn't thought about the Chamber of Secrets in _years_. He had never dwelled on it much. Maybe he'd been too young. Maybe death hadn't meant as much back then.

It was nearing six. The first tendrils of dawn had crosshatched themselves across the skies. It seemed like it would be a nice day. Harry decided he was better off getting it going. He didn't think he would be able to fall asleep again if he tried.

When the tap made the pipes in the walls murmur and hum, he turned it off and scrambled out of the bathroom. In the corridor, his hands shook something horrid. He took a breath, spun around, stepped back inside, grabbed the toothbrush and toothpaste, and ran downstairs without looking back. He could wash up in the kitchen sink.

He had got dressed and was halfway through making tea when he heard the first movement upstairs. His morning peace was about to suffer a deadly paroxysm. He had stayed over many times the past month, and somehow those experiences had not proven to him definitively that this was a poor idea. He'd moved in most of his things and started paying for the room a week ago. So far, it was fair to say he was spending too much time working around Snape's building desire to hurt him, to bother with hurting himself.

He flung the fridge door open to fetch the milk and froze. There _was_ no milk. He'd used it up yesterday making soft biscuits for Teddy. He'd reminded himself to go out and get more in the afternoon. Then, he'd slept through the afternoon.

The problem was this: Snape liked to have coffee in the morning. Snape liked milk in his coffee. If Snape didn't get his coffee and decided this was Harry's fault, Snape lost his capacity to use reason. Last time Harry had forgotten to buy milk, Snape had sent him out into the _rain_ at _seven in the morning_ still wearing his _pyjama top_. The village shop didn't open until eight, and it had been bloody dark and Harry had been guaranteed to get frostbite, but did Snape care? No, he didn't. Harry had scrounged a carton off Marnie, the neighbour who'd given him her shawl on his first night here. She'd been sympathetic to his plight once he'd explained that his 'uncle' had 'lost his mind.'

He was not going through this again. Harry was not in the mood.

He slammed the fridge door shut and positioned himself strategically in front of it. 'Do you want to walk down to Whitby and get breakfast out?' he asked just as Snape walked through the door. 'It's going to be a nice day.'

Snape pulled down a mug from the top shelf. He only kept his nicest mugs there. Harry was too short to reach them. 'Everything will be closed,' he grumbled.

'Not Marnie's café,' Harry said. 'They open at eight. It'll be eight by the time we get there.'

Snape was now trying to echolocate the can of coffee so he wouldn't have to open his eyes. He was clearly not engaging.

'Come on, it's my treat. And there won't be anyone there so early, it'll be nice and quiet.'

A sigh. Dwelling for longer than ten seconds became a powerful argument when your opponent had not one thread of patience. 'Fine,' he spat. He placed the mug back on the shelf. 'I'll go get changed.'

It was about an hour's walk down the shoreline and usually they apparated some of the way, but Harry was chock-full of an odd thrum today, which made his breath hitch when he thought back on his dream or forward to the night to come, and a quick pace in the blasting wind quietened it a little. He made sure to walk ahead of Snape, so if the man had a comment to make, Harry wouldn't hear it.

He was sweaty and flushed when they finally climbed the winding stairway that sat to the back of the café and claimed their rightful table in the dormer window. They now hanged leaning above the bottle-neck street below, where tourists would flock and yell and brush against one another the moment the weather improved, Harry was sure, and then Snape would never want to come again.

By the time their food had arrived and Snape had gone through a full cup of coffee and ordered another one, the brisk walk had ceased all effect, and Harry's foot began tapping out a quick rhythm on the floor. He would need to go to the toilet once he'd had all this tea, and he _really_ didn't want to.

Snape was entirely ignorant of this issue, absorbed as he was in the Daily Prophet he'd brought with him. The glamour on it made the photographs sit still and the lettering strangely difficult to make out.

'So, how's it going?' Harry asked lamely. He thought maybe if he had a conversation to focus on, he would become less aware of the sour taste in his throat.

Snape ignored him.

'We should talk about something,' Harry insisted. 'It's awkward to just sit here.'

'We are enjoying companionable silence,' Snape informed him without looking up from the paper. 'It is often far superior to conversation.'

'Then you might as well have stayed home and enjoyed the silence alone. You're not even getting anything out of this.'

'I thought you'd said you were paying.'

Harry rolled his eyes. He shifted his weight on the chair, then again, and squeezed his hands into fists. He needed to _move_.

'Have you registered for the Apparition Exam?'

Harry groaned. 'I don't want to talk about that.'

'You were whinging not a minute ago that you wanted to talk. I am talking. When are you planning on registering?'

Snape was worse than Hermione sometimes. 'So, what's happening out in the big world?' he tried to distract him, pointing at the paper with a jutting chin.

'The Apparition Exam, on the 29th of April,' Snape sent him a baleful glare, which Harry expertly avoided by focusing on his eggs. They were growing cold. 'Other than that, not much. I am reading an opinion piece on the Ministry's failure to prosecute Edward Selwyn.'

The name sounded familiar. 'Wait, he was—he was a Death Eater, wasn't he?'

'Certainly,' said Snape. 'He was removed from his position at the Ministry, but it has been decided that not enough evidence has come to the fore for a sentence.'

'Oh. That's not great.'

'Indeed.'

Snape fell silent. Harry didn't understand it: once they were in the middle of talking, he tended to rather enjoy their conversations unless they were rows, and either way at least they flowed naturally. But he could never remember _how_ they started. Often, it seemed impossible that they ever would.

'So, what's the opinion piece say about it?' he pushed. Snape's frown made it clear how little interest he had in sharing.

'The columnist draws a tentative link between the Selwyns' influence in the country and abroad, Edward's non-existent sentence and the curious removal of Dementors from Azkaban the moment a number of the pureblood elite were sent there.'

'Isn't that a good thing though? Dementors are pretty nasty—'

'Yes, and previous campaigns for their removal by pressure groups all proved unsuccessful, because the Ministry were sure there was no other way in which to ascertain containment. It seems they simply needed an incentive.'

Snape sounded angry. Harry felt like he was six again, sat at the end of the classroom and unable to make out anything written on the board. 'But you disagree with the columnist?' he tried. His leg was still tapping out its rhythm, but it had slowed some.

'I despise cowardice in those who claim to hold to ideals,' Snape sneered. He took an angry bite of his scone. 'The only reason Selwyn isn't rotting in Azkaban is that the Ministry doesn't wish to _upset the balance_ of the wizarding world. In other words, we will not put the purebloods away, because Merlin forbid we were left with a society in which half-bloods wield more electoral power. There should be nothing tentative about making this connection. The Ministry is filled with the same vermin that aided the Dark Lord in exercising his power, but The Prophet firmly believes stating the fact would be equal to calling them Death Eaters, and thus in poor taste.'

'But the people who worked at the Ministry, a lot of them didn't want to help Voldemort,' Harry remembered the fear on Mafalda Hopkirk's face. 'The actual Death Eaters were all kicked out of the Ministry, Kingsley's told me. The rest of them were forced—'

'Oh, please, Potter,' Snape's laugh was cutting. 'Kingsley is a figurehead who does a fair job appeasing the Order. Maybe some of the low-level clerks were indeed forced under threat of death to become servile rats to a foreign cause, but you do not need to be a Death Eater to facilitate an environment in which Death Eaters come to appear. And then it's in your best interest not to upset the status quo. If they need to make an example out of a radical to prove themselves to the public, then they will take money off a few purebloods and put away the likes of Lucius Malfoy, and then no one can argue they have no interest in justice.'

'I've never really thought about that,' Harry admitted, a little shaken by Snape's intensity. He wasn't great with politics. He didn't know if this was because he'd grown up Muggle, or because he'd failed his History of Magic OWL, or because he was too stupid to understand anything more complex than Voldemort Bad Harry Good. He wanted to have an opinion but wasn't sure how one went about acquiring it. It made him feel like a child.

'Of course you haven't,' Snape mocked. 'We wouldn't want to trouble our Chosen One with unnecessary thinking. Thank Merlin he has no brain of his own; let's just point him towards the thing we want him to kill and be done with it!'

'Stop yelling at me,' Harry's voice rose as anger stirred in his head. Thoughts were loose threads, tangled and blurry, and he found himself jumping from one to the next seemingly without effort. 'I'm not the one who wrote that stupid column!'

'I am not yelling at you!' Snape yelled. 'Heavens, Potter, with how sensitive you are, I am surprised you didn't break down into tears the moment the Dark Lord said he was not a fan of the Boy Hero brand.'

Harry stood. The cups on the table trembled dangerously but didn't tip over. Without a word, he marched himself to the bathroom, bolted the door, closed the toilet seat and slunk down. He pushed his head between his knees and pressed them together, until he couldn't hear anything but the echo of the blood flowing to and from his brain. It sounded like what you would hear in a seashell. He should go this afternoon, he thought, and look for some on the beach during low tide.

There was truth to what Snape had said, he realised. It was not as if Harry even knew very much about what being pureblood meant when he went after the Basilisk. It had been clear-cut then, of course, because his friends were getting attacked and the thing had to be stopped. But he'd been twelve. He hadn't known anything about Voldemort. He hadn't even understood what death was, really. Had he grown more aware over these past years, or was he just as ignorant? Harry Potter, the mindless automaton. Harry Potter, available for free public use, doesn't ask questions.

Someone in the kitchen downstairs must have turned the tap on, because the walls hummed. It cut through Harry's heartbeat and squeezed around his stomach. He had officially lost all appetite. He wanted to peer at the sink to reassure himself, but was too afraid of seeing a pair of yellow eyes. Why could nightmares not just stay in bed where they belonged? Why did they follow him around through the day when they didn't even matter anymore?

When he came out some twenty minutes later, Snape offered him one of his scones and put extra cream on top. Harry understood this to signify a laying down of arms.

In the afternoon, he went to buy milk and pick up seashells. He got some algae, too, thinking Snape might find some use for it. He was sure they'd brewed a potion in fifth year that used the red ones, though he couldn't remember anymore what it was.

At night, he dreamed about drowning in a cauldron of Living Death Draught, about Voldemort invading his mind at the Ministry, about that time Dudley hit him with the bike, and about dying in the Chamber of Secrets.

* * *


	2. February 27th, 1999

**February 27th, 1999.**

Hogsmeade was a delta of slush, twined with twigs and feathers and rubbish, pushed around by the vicious wind. Prewarned by Filch's grumbling, Hermione had cast an Impermeable on her boots before leaving the castle, but she could hear the water in Harry's shoes splash back and forth. She'd thought to offer, but he hadn't complained and she'd been working on being a little less— 'responsible,' Luna had described her recently. 'Dictatorial,' Draco would have said. Whatever.

She'd still forced Harry to come with her to the registration office, but that had _really_ been for his own good. He'd been the one to say just this morning that the only reason he hadn't signed up for the Apparition exam was not wanting to answer the inevitable questions. 'I'll do all the talking then,' Hermione had promised. 'Yeah, she's good at that,' Ron had said, then quickly turned to avoid her blistering glare.

That had been nearly an hour ago now. Talking always took longer than she thought it ought to. If everyone just spoke plainly and moved swiftly to the point, Hermione would have perhaps had the time to do something beyond work—sleep—eat.

Ron waited for them in the Hog's Head, three Butterbeers set out in anticipation. He grinned when they entered, gestured towards Aberforth behind the bar, mouthed 'Bad mood,' and straightened exaggeratedly, like he was trying hard to be a model customer. This, she always had the time for.

'All done?' he asked.

'Yeah,' Harry nodded tersely, like he was trying to make himself annoyed with her. No one was fooled: relief bled through the clamps of his tension, and he spared Hermione an apologetic smile straight after.

'Good. Trust me, mate, you do not want to take the bloody thing on your own,' Ron shuffled to the side so Hermione could slide onto the bench next to him. 'They look at you like you're a war criminal. And they make it, like, twice as hard to pass. Actually, I've heard—' he leaned across the table, looking like a five-year-old plotting a scheme to steal the biscuit can, and something in Hermione's chest had an opinion about that, '—I've heard that unless it's a big body part that needs reattaching, like an arm or leg or something, that the examiners get to keep whatever you've splinched. The bullshit contract you sign? It's in there. They get to keep any chunks of flesh and fingernails and stuff. What? I'm being serious!'

Harry's smile was nestled tightly into the corner of his mouth, but he managed to keep it out of his voice. 'And what do they do with them?'

'I don't know, sell them to a shady dealer in Knockturn Alley, probably. I'm sure there's a market for it. Werewolves, vampires, there are probably even some creepy potions that use human fingernails, you should ask Snape.'

Hermione's appreciation of Ron at his most ridiculously adorable warred with her appreciation for facts and reason. Eventually, the latter won. 'Oh, please. And who's the source of this idiocy? Kamilah?'

Ron's silence was confirmation enough.

'You need to get that girl in touch with Luna. This could be a Quibbler scoop.'

'I'm not letting the Lovegoods steal my staff,' Ron grumbled without looking at either of them. She'd embarrassed him. But he'd clearly not been entirely serious. Could he get upset about being called an idiot over something he didn't even believe?

In truth, it probably didn't matter which of them had been in the wrong. She should simply extend a hand under the table, or smooth his frown away with a peck to the temple, or something. But it would feel like capitulation and she hadn't resolved if she'd been at fault.

'I think Snape's skimping on the Knockturn Alley ones,' Harry was pulling his shoes and socks off in a series of disconcerting squelches. 'He's always having me cut my nails straight over a cauldron.'

Ron's face cleared. Hermione should have been the one to make that happen. 'There _are_ some ancient potions that use fingernails, I think,' she acquiesced with a sigh. 'Though I can't imagine Professor Snape needing to brew them when there exist modern variations that don't use human body parts. Also, they would require whole fingernails, not just cut-offs.'

'Oh, is that why he pulls mine out do you think?' Harry asked seriously. 'I thought that was just because I annoyed him.'

This time, Ron gave a full laugh. Harry exchanged a grin with him that Hermione was not privy to, then began wringing his socks over the floor. Aberforth tossed him a glare, but censure would require conversation, and he usually preferred to act like he didn't know them.

Hermione felt a hand on hers. Ron's thumb swept over her knuckles. Great. He had to go and be the bigger man in this, too.

'Oh, have they got back in touch yet?' he remembered suddenly. 'Are you officially the new apprentice under the International Confederation of Wizards? Am I officially the boyfriend of the new apprentice under the International—'

'They _have_ got back in touch,' Hermione confirmed, pleased when her voice remained perfectly level. 'But they've rejected me.'

'What?' Ron stared at her. 'What do you mean they've rejected you? No way!'

She should be happy that he believed in her. She should be happy they all believed in her. But that unwavering certainty, this, surely _Hermione_ couldn't fail, it meant that Hermione wasn't Hermione anymore when she failed. Like now. Maybe they didn't know the real Hermione, she wondered sometimes. The Hermione they knew wouldn't have stumbled over her words during the interview. The Hermione they knew would have got the position and been set for after graduation, and never wondered if she even wanted the apprenticeship in the first place, or cried in the prefects' bathroom for an hour when she didn't get it.

'Many people from many different backgrounds apply,' she informed him tightly. 'Some of the candidates were clearly better suited for it than I was. They told me to try again in a few years.'

'But—come on!' Ron exclaimed. She wanted so badly for him to shut up. 'How could they not want you? What's wrong with them?'

'I'm sorry,' Harry managed to catch her eye. 'Do you know what you're going to do instead?'

Maybe nothing, Hermione thought. She was tired. She was sick of not sleeping. She'd been putting in extra hours for months to get that apprenticeship, but if she wasn't even the Hermione Granger they'd thought she was, maybe there was little point to it. Maybe she could spend the rest of term hanging out with Luna and Neville in the greenhouses, and walking down to Hagrid's for tea, and, huh, _eating_ with Draco? All they did together was study and eat, but she wouldn't have minded doing more of the latter. And then the Hogsmeade weekends would come, and she could stretch them instead of rushing back to finish an assessment, and she could listen to Ron and Harry joke around, and climb onto Ron's lap in that dark corner behind the bar, and what else could she want for? Was this not enough? Looking at them now, faces writ with compassion, Harry's socks drying on the mantle. This was all she could ever want, she thought.

'I don't know, I might try the Ministry instead,' she shrugged. She prayed Ron would remember their earlier row and not immediately offer to speak with his mother on her behalf. She could think of nothing more humiliating than working under Mrs Weasley. Hermione Granger, the Ministry's resident girlfriend.

Fortunately, he seemed to recall, because he only nodded. But then, he asked, 'Wait, you did tell them you knew Harry, right?' and that was worse.

'I didn't,' she admitted. 'It has little to do with the position.'

'Hermione!' he exclaimed, too loud. Aberforth glared at him. 'We've agreed! Harry's agreed! Why the bloody hell didn't you put that down? You were supposed to put it down in the application—'

'I wanted to get it because of _me_ , Ron, not because I happen to be acquainted with Harry Potter!'

'Happen to—what does it even matter? Obviously it's about you, it's because of you that you'd be good at it, but what does it matter if you get a little help getting that opportunity to show them—?'

'It matters to me,' she stated firmly.

'So what, you're not going to tell anyone you know Harry at all? What if he meets up with some stupidly important Confederation official, because yeah, he probably will at some point, is he not allowed to go, oh, I know this girl, actually, who's interested in—'

'No, he is not! Harry, you are _not_ —'

'You're being ridiculous! Harry, tell her she's being ridiculous.'

Harry was looking between them with the air of someone who wished he hadn't been dragged into the conversation. 'Uhm, I don't know,' he said carefully, 'I mean, you know I don't mind, Hermione, I would be happy to give you a reference or something, like I've said. But if Hermione wants to do it all on her own, then that's her decision I guess.'

'Thank you,' Hermione pointed to him with a vindictive finger. 'Exactly, that is _my_ decision.'

'Great, because it's a stupid one! Who cares how you get there, what matters is that we all know you deserve it, and that you're going to be great, and that's just how these things work, who you know is always important—'

'Oh, honestly, Ron, you sound just like Draco now.'

'Well, blimey, I guess I agree with Draco Bloody Malfoy then!'

'This is not your business,' she was beginning to feel ill. She pushed the Butterbeer away. Maybe it was stale. 'These are my personal goals, and I will achieve them my way, on my own merit.'

'You're not going to achieve _shit,_ ' Ron said, more quietly now. 'And don't tell me that's not my business, because I want you to be happy and I want you to do the things you want to do. But you won't be able to do them if you refuse any help you get offered.'

The atmosphere was still a little tense between them when they parted ways later that afternoon, but by the time Hermione had got back to the castle, all the anger had been shaken out of her, and what remained was a quiet sort of resignation. Maybe Ron was right. Maybe she couldn't accomplish her goals on her own merit. Maybe if she were _that_ Hermione Granger, the one she pretended to be, maybe she could do it then.

'Wipe your feet!' Filch screeched from the top of the entrance hall stairway. 'Wipe your feet, you filthy animals!'

Hermione cleaned her shoes with an off-handed spell and pushed her way through the crowd of third-years obediently shuffling around by the door. Most of their boots were a lost cause. If she'd been in a different mood, she would have stayed behind and helped ensure none of them got Filch too annoyed. The other Hermione would have stayed, but she was _this_ Hermione.

'Spell-casting!' Filch screamed at her. 'Spell-casting in the corridors!'

'I'm of age,' she informed him without feeling. 'Can I pass? I'd like to get to my dormitory.'

'Do I look like I care?' Filch sneered. 'No spell-casting in the corridors, not on my watch, oh no.'

'Now, now, Argus, Miss Granger is a spectacularly talented witch!' a low voice rang from further up the stairs, and Hermione closed her eyes briefly: if she was in no mood for Filch, she was certainly in no mood for Professor Slughorn. 'I can vouch that her spellwork is flawless!'

Hermione thought about pointing out that prefects and students who had achieved their majority were permitted to cast spells anywhere they pleased. She thought about explaining that this particular school regulation had been conceived to protect early-year students from magical accidents, and that the entire student and teacher body had long decided to largely ignore it otherwise. She thought about offering to use the spell on the shoes of the third-years. But all of this sounded very tiring, so she stood idly instead as Professor Slughorn argued with Filch, and then obediently followed him up to the first floor as he prattled on about the fundraiser party.

She had mostly evaded engaging in discussion over the event: she had no interest in attending, the thought of it made her anxious, the whole thing was going to be ludicrous, and Professor Slughorn would never let her get out of it. Draco would probably never speak to her again if she didn't go, either. He had not received an invitation, the event being restricted to donors, members of the school board, a few of Slughorn's friends and, of course, her Slug Club compatriots. But if anything could make him angrier with her than attending the event inevitably would, it would be her _choosing_ not to attend. At least Neville had promised to be there. Hermione had been counting on them being miserable together.

Now, though, as she bade goodbye to Slughorn, Ron's harsh words still ringing in her ears, she realised she couldn't just go and be miserable with Neville. Because Hermione could fool herself all she wanted with visions of a life in which her friends' laughter was enough, but at the end of the day she would want more, always, and if she wasn't the Hermione who could get more by mere virtue of being herself, if she had lied to them all pretending to be that Hermione, that didn't matter. She wanted it. And that meant maybe she needed to play their game.

Instead of the dormitory, she turned sharply and bounded up the stairs to the library. She was not disappointed: Draco sat sullenly in their usual spot by the window, hair mussed and cheek red from resting too long against his hand. He usually spent Hogsmeade weekends sulking over homework, which, judging by his lack of progress, consisted less of the homework and more of the sulking. She had thought once she'd caught a glimpse of a paperback novel underneath the spread of musty volumes, but Draco had concealed it quickly. It wouldn't do for her to believe he was lazing the day away reading for pleasure rather than slaving over his education while she went out to have fun.

'Do you know any of the donors coming next week?' she asked him, a little breathless.

'Good evening to you, too,' he said primly. 'I assume you're referring to the party.'

'Yes, obviously, the party. Now, do you know anyone who might be coming?'

'Undoubtedly,' Draco intoned. 'Did you remember my caramels?'

Hermione threw the Honeydukes bag into his lap. 'Good,' she declared, grabbing his Arithmancy volume to slide it over to her side of the table. She wanted to read ahead before Monday class, she decided. 'Because you're coming, and you'll be making my introductions. I'll ask Slughorn for the full guest list tomorrow.'


	3. March 3rd, 1999

**March 3rd, 1999.**

Teddy displayed interest in the book for about three minutes, after which he went straight back to playing with his wooden cups.

There was nothing whatsoever interesting about the wooden cups, Harry was positive. The book had animated drawings printed on thick cardboard and produced sounds and smells when you poked it right, and the cups were a smooth, tired wood that did nothing at all. They seemed like they would have had paint on them once upon a time, and since they were all different sizes, Harry wondered if they might have been bottom halves from a set of Matryoshka dolls. Teddy was fascinated. He fit one into the next into the next, forehead frowned in concentration and mouth curling around sounds of frustration or victory. He had already observed that the largest cup could not fit into the smallest, but had not yet quite grasped it could not fit into the medium one either, and tugged on Andromeda's skirts every two minutes to inform her of this fact.

'It doesn't fit,' Andromeda would say every time. 'No, it doesn't fit. You're right. It's too big.'

Teddy would shake his head in silent agreement and return to his experiments. He was content not to involve Harry. He'd been going through his shy phase, Andromeda had explained.

Now Harry thought he shouldn't have bothered with the book. He'd agonized over the choice for a full afternoon. Snape, who'd declined Harry's invitation to come along yet still felt he was entitled to an opinion, hadn't liked any of the books from the Flourish and Blotts catalogue even once it had been pointed out to him that on average, toddlers had lower standards than adult wizards. Snape had then harangued Harry, modern publishers and finally society at large for instilling low standards in the general population through spoon-feeding said toddlers poor texts with 'ludicrously ugly illustrations.' The entire conversation could have been avoided had Harry known Teddy was currently in love with the concept of containers. Not even Snape could have thought of an argument to follow.

'He'll probably pick it up in a few days and obsess over it,' Andromeda tried to reassure him. Harry hated that she thought he needed reassuring. It was insane to feel hurt that a baby didn't want to play with a new toy.

'How's, uh, how's Kreacher doing? You've not had any trouble with him, have you?' he asked instead, eager to wipe that expression of gentle amusement from her face.

'Oh, no, he's been splendid,' Andromeda poured him more tea. Teddy had taken to banging one cup against the other rhythmically and her face frowned with it, but she didn't ask him to stop, only spoke a little louder, 'I have to admit it's a relief not to cook baby food myself any longer, it must be the most boring activity ever conceived—I had to do everything on my own with Dora, you see, but I was younger then and I still had some patience.'

Harry thought Andromeda still had plenty patience, but he didn't say it. He also didn't point out most people could not in fact expect to have house elves helping with childcare. It sounded like something Hermione would have said.

'And he's very good with Teddy,' she praised. 'He got him these cups, actually—though I'm not so sure sometimes if they're toys or implements of torture.'

Teddy banged his cup against the table leg this time, pleased at the sound. Andromeda winced and reflexively grabbed at the tray to ensure nothing was tipped over.

For an insane moment, Harry thought about rescinding his offer to lend them Kreacher. He could say he needed him. He could invent something he needed him for.

He didn't know what was wrong with him.

'Where did he get them?' he asked. Andromeda shrugged, wholly disinterested in a way that reminded Harry of Sirius.

'Oh, who knows. I think he's mentioned getting them off another elf, but I don't know which house. Hm? Right. It won't fit, you're right, Teddy. It just won't fit. It's much too big.'

Harry imagined her knocking the toy from Teddy's grasp. The image gave him an unpleasant jolt, but he couldn't help but pursue the scenario in his head, compelled by a strange twist of satisfaction: he _wanted_ her to lose patience. He wanted her to yell at Teddy to stop making noise and let the adults talk in peace. He wanted her to call him ungrateful for not appreciating Harry's present, and have Harry take it back since Teddy was clearly too good for it. He wanted Teddy to cry until he was red in the face and covered in snot.

Harry rose abruptly.

'I'll just use the bathroom if that's alright,' he said quickly. He felt too dirty to look her in the eye.

Once he'd locked the door behind him, he stared in the mirror, desperate to force the images out of his head, to swap them for the image of his face, his eyes, his hands tight on the edge of the basin. How could anyone wish a thing like that? How could anyone even _think_ such a thing, and get some sick pleasure out of it?

He lowered himself to sit on the toilet seat. It had been over a week since he'd last dreamt of the Chamber, but the ember of threat had rekindled the moment he'd stepped into the room, and superimposed over his earlier fantasies. At home, he'd worked out a routine, in the course of which he imagined every impossible thing that could happen to him in the bathroom. If he saw a flash of eyes, he had to close his and scream and scramble out onto the stairway. As long as he screamed in time, Snape would hear. Then, Harry needed to cast Protego, blindly. He would scream at Snape again, maybe, to warn him to avoid the fangs, too. Snape would probably think it was obvious and mock him. And even if he ended up petrified, Snape would find him quickly because of the scream, and would be able to brew him an antidote.

Here, now, the circumstances were different, but running through the scenario helped anyway: he would close his eyes. Call Kreacher. Cast shielding spells over the drawing room. Here, it didn't matter as much if Harry lived or died, as long as he stopped the snake getting to Teddy.

Maybe Teddy would never like him. Maybe he was a broken, sadistic person taking out his damage on innocent children and their wooden cups. But at least he supposed he could protect him from giant snakes. That counted for something, didn't it? Would Remus think it counted for something?

When he came back into the room, Teddy was sat in Andromeda's lap and she was blowing on his thumb. He must have banged it against the table when he was playing. His eyes were shiny with tears and Harry felt at once that it was his fault. Unlike his fantasies, reality had no satisfaction to give.

Harry must have been five years old, he thought suddenly. Uncle Vernon had taken Dudley on a rare father-son outing: Aunt Petunia had insisted they needed to spend time together, and Dudley had cried, latched onto her, for nearly an hour before he was pried into leaving with sweets and promises of presents, and then they were off for the afternoon. Harry was told to go play in the garden as Aunt Petunia played solitaire and had her coffee, but he'd fallen and scraped his knee something horrible. The blood had soaked into his sock, he remembered. Aunt Petunia huffed at his teary face and told him he was being impossible, but she put him in her lap as she cleaned the cut, and then let him stay there for a little while and watch her play. He didn't really understand solitaire but tried to be helpful by pointing out the cards to move, and his aunt laughed. He struggled to recall another time when he'd made her laugh like that.

After that, he'd hatched a plan. The next time he was out playing, he threw himself on the ground when no one was looking, twice, three times until he got it right and scraped himself bloody. His aunt didn't let him hang around long enough to play cards again, but she still held him in her lap as she saw to his knee, and that was good enough.

The third time he'd done it, she told him he was an attention-seeking brat and locked him in the cupboard for hurting himself on purpose. For years, Harry had thought this incredibly unfair: she couldn't have known he had made himself fall. Who jumped to a conclusion like that when a five-year-old trotted into the kitchen bleeding over himself? But then, he had assumed his plan had been executed over weeks, with long gaps between when knees healed. Recently, he'd re-examined the memory, and realised he'd still been wearing the band-aids when he returned to the kitchen a third time. It might have been just a few days. What if, he wondered, and the force of the suspicion cut, what if it had all been that one afternoon, when Uncle Vernon and Dudley were away?

He sat, watching Andromeda converse with Teddy over whether he needed a nap to cure his terribly hurt finger, and felt a sinking shame in his gut. He could imagine how pathetic he must have looked, throwing himself onto the ground over and again so that his aunt would pay him mind. Attention-seeking brat. She'd been trying to have a quiet afternoon with her coffee, finally a moment to herself. He was a beggar and when she'd magnanimously thrown him a scrap, he became shamefully greedy, demanding more.

'He'll get more sociable in a few months,' Andromeda caught his eye. She thought he was upset over the lack of attention. Always needing attention.

The longer she watched him as he failed to reply, the more her face shifted, until she was saying, 'You must have been around his age when you lost your parents.'

Harry cleared his throat. 'A little older,' he said.

'I lost mine, too, though in a different way, I suppose,' she mused. There was no pain in her voice. 'And I was, well, I _thought_ I was an adult back then. Really, I was, what, your age,' she gave him a smile, and Harry felt himself mirroring it against his will. 'And it was one of the most terrible tragedies of life. I can't imagine what it must be like for the two of you.'

'It's not so bad,' he lied. He peered at Teddy, eyes hooded with sleep, comfortable in Andromeda's lap like a king on a throne, taking it for granted, spoiled with it, and he felt a flare of shameful anger again. 'And Teddy has you, and he'll get told all about his parents, and that—I think he'll be alright. My aunt, she didn't really tell me anything about mine.'

'Do you have a good relationship, you and your aunt?' she sounded curious, and also like maybe she already knew the answer. There was no point in lying.

'No. I didn't realise it when I was younger, but now I think that she might have blamed me. She was my mum's sister. I think she blamed my dad and me, because maybe if my mum hadn't, you know—if not for us, maybe she wouldn't have died.'

'That's horrid,' Andromeda said. 'How can anyone possibly blame a child for such a thing?'

'I'm not saying she was right or anything,' he shrugged. 'I'm just—I think I understand her, a little.'

'Well, I don't,' she declared. 'The way I see it, Teddy is what I have of Dora's, but more than that, he is the greatest gift she could have left me. I am not so certain I could have made it through this all if she hadn't given it.'

Harry wondered if he should touch her. It seemed like it would be awkward, so he only stared down his cup. 'It helps to have someone to love,' he agreed.

She waved a dismissive hand at him. 'Oh, who cares about love,' she said. Harry's eyes snapped to hers, and she laughed at his surprise. 'Don't make me get all soft, Harry, I wasn't brought up that way. Of course I love my grandson. But the gift was purpose. That's what you need to survive.'

Harry thought about Voldemort. He thought about Snape. He supposed it was true, that purpose was what it took.

Teddy yawned. Andromeda smiled at him, softer and fuller than when she'd smiled at Harry. It would really be most ideal to have both, he decided. Love and purpose. And he had people to love, already, even if he wasn't quite sure how to go about loving them.

It would be nice to find purpose next. Or maybe his purpose could be survival itself.

Maybe it was enough, for now.


	4. March 6th, 1999

**March 6th, 1999.**

The oven dish slipped, thunked, and cracked. Severus was going to kill something.

His pulse was racing. His hands had been shaking since this morning, and his grip had been uneven, and his legs numb when he stood for too long. He could never predict these days: it could have been disturbed sleep, or a change in the weather, or merely his body deciding it had had enough of remaining live and functional. His lungs pushed a wheeze past his throat. He had no way of determining if this was a symptom of long-term damage to the respiratory system, or a psychological reaction to the evidence that his body was failing him.

It was nothing. The weeks following the snake bite had been the real nightmare, and days like these were something he would just have to live with. They could force him to crack the oven dish, ruin potions, delay shipments and take early nights, but they would not stop him making lunch like a normal person.

He cast a shaky Reparo and cracked the first egg. It splattered unpleasantly, the yolk spilling over. He could call Potter in from where was lounging about the sofa, crunching on his cornflakes – he was _always_ crunching on his cornflakes, the sound a needle piercing right through Severus's eardrums – and demand he make himself useful, but he fancied eggs in purgatory and he'd already started. Potter was a fair cook, but he was terrible at taking instruction and Severus wanted the eggs done _his_ way.

He'd successfully avoided the sitting room all morning. All he needed was to make it past lunch. Then the boy would be off to meet Weasley and Severus's breath would be returned to him. He should have realised that Potter moving in would mean that Potter would be _there_ , constantly, on the good days and the bad days. Those first few weeks, when he'd stayed a night here and there, those had been largely pleasant and he'd convinced himself he could do this. He wasn't so sure anymore.

He didn't say a word to him when he finally set the plates down. Potter had eyes. He could see it was lunch. Judging from the speed at which he made his way to the table, he'd been waiting. He was out of pyjamas, too, and it wasn't even one yet, which meant this was a Good Day for Potter. Great. Severus was happy for him. He would only prefer it if the boy could go and live out his good day somewhere else.

He'd left his mug on the coffee table again. Even from all the way by the window, Severus could see it was half-full with cold tea. Potter put milk and sugar in, too, so it would crust over with mould in record time. He didn't understand what was so challenging about washing a mug once you were done with it.

'What time are you meeting Weasley?' he asked. Potter was buttering his bread without a care in the world. The mug was giving Severus a headache. The edges of the world were blurring.

'Oh, no, that's tomorrow,' he said. 'I don't have any plans today.'

That wouldn't do. First of all because Severus did not trust himself around teenagers today. Second of all because he had virtually no idea how one went about helping a teenager out of depression, so his strategy largely amounted to ensuring Potter was busy enough to maybe not have the time for it.

'Then make some plans,' he said. Had he boiled the potatoes long enough? The past hour was a disjointed string of half-memories. He fished one out and tried: soft enough. 'I won't have you lazing around here all day, leaving dirty mugs lying around.'

Potter rolled his eyes. Severus should have demanded more rent. He'd been too proud to accept money from James Potter's spawn, but James Potter's spawn was too proud to accept a free room, and so Severus used the loophole he was well-familiar with owing to his long acquaintance with the Malfoys: old money made children helplessly stupid. Potter had no idea how much rent was supposed to be. He had no notion he was paying a symbolic sum any landlord would have balked at. It reignited something old and vile in Severus.

'Go have tea with your haunted artist friends,' he recommended. Marnie and her husband lived only a few minutes away, but it would get rid of the boy for at least an hour, which was a start. They also made good tea. Severus had been dragged along once. 'They clearly have nothing better to be doing with their lives.'

'Okay,' he agreed easily. Too easily. If not the idea itself, normally he would have argued against the insults, always too easy to bait. Severus narrowed his eyes. He was either in a truly terrific mood or had recognized that Severus was in a bad one.

'Ugh, what _is_ this thing?' the boy lifted his fork with a grimace.

'Artichoke.'

'It's terrible,' Potter announced.

Of course. What did it matter he'd had the meal made and delivered? What did it matter Severus was the one who should have been lying on the sofa, but he'd soldiered on instead, all to feed the Golden Boy?

'I mean, the rest of it is really good,' Potter rushed to add at his glare. 'Just, can you make it without _this thing_ next time?'

'No,' Severus didn't give it a second's thought. It would be a shameful day indeed when he stooped to catering to Potter's whims. He would probably do well going hungry for once in his life, as a cure for his fussing.

Of course, Potter was still too skinny, which meant Severus would likely need to fatten him up _before_ introducing him to the harsh realities of the world.

'Great, well, next time I cook, I will put something in you don't like, and we'll see how you feel then.'

'Go ahead,' Severus scoffed. 'I am not a child, Potter—' Potter was now chivvying piece after piece of artichoke out of the dish and placing them to the side of his plate. 'If you wish to be disgusting, kindly take yourself out of the room.'

'It's just slimy,' he said, and before Severus could argue it was very much _not_ , he added, 'Do you want it?'

'You're asking me if I want your saliva-doused—' the boy used a finger to slide one of the pieces off his fork. Severus considered eviction. 'Heavens, Potter, just put them in the bin.'

'No, I don't want to waste food!'

'Oh, for f—' Severus almost said a word he didn't say in front of those who'd met him _after_ he'd lost his Black Country accent. His headache pulsated. 'I'll put your whole plate in the bin if you don't settle down.'

'No, no, it's fine, I'll eat it.' With the way he was looking at it, you might have thought Severus had served him overcooked flobberworms. 'I'm not putting anything in the bin.'

Severus's headache none-too-gently let him know he'd had enough. 'Give it here,' he demanded. Potter made a motion to shield the plate with his elbow, but when Severus showed no signs of relenting, he exclaimed instead,

'No, I said I'll eat it, don't—'

Because of course Severus Snape was the heartless monster that took away children's food. Now furious, he scraped the offending vegetable from Potter's plate onto his own, then set the dish back before the brat. He mixed the extra artichoke in with the rest of his eggs, hopeful it might let him forget some of the pieces had come near the boy's mouth.

'Oh,' Potter commented simply, like it was so very astonishing that Severus had not gone out of his way to make him miserable. 'Thank you.'

At least his face had gone appropriately red. And he ate the rest of his lunch in silence, but the relaxed kind that showed he was happy. Severus might have lost all dignity, but at least he'd reached the lowest of lows and it could only go up from here, he decided, and at least the boy was happy and mercifully quiet, satisfying Severus's twin aspirations of late.

He set out for tea soon after and was gone long enough that Severus managed a nap. Though it did little to quell his headache, his hands and his nerves eased a little. He was in the process of removing the offending mug from the coffee table when Potter strode back in, windswept, grinning too loudly, and carrying a flat rectangular box.

'I would have cleaned that,' he said in lieu of a welcome, eyes on the mug Severus was holding.

'In this millennium?' Severus kept about half the usual acid out of his voice. He'd been trying to remember that for all that the boy was ridiculously oversensitive, the boy had also recently come to him pale-faced and dripping dark blood. 'What is that?'

'I've bought a painting!' he said, like this was a thing one simply _did_ on a Tuesday. 'Jordan's only just finished it and he said he thought I'd like it, and I did, look—'

He was unearthing the thing from amid tissue paper and bubble wrap. It showed dawn breaking over the Sandsend cliffs, with every house of the village depicted in painstaking detail, the sea a mesmerizing glare of blues.

'I thought it would look good on the wall here,' the boy demonstrated. 'This room really needs some colour. It looks sad, just all beige.'

And Severus no longer cared if the painting was pleasant to look at. He'd had enough of Potter's mugs, Potter's slippers abandoned in the middle of the corridor, Potter's godawful owl screeching in the dead of night to be let out, Potter's moods and unpredictable laughs and curious looks taking in and evaluating everything Severus did.

'May I remind you that this is _my_ house,' he hissed, 'because with how you've been traipsing around as if you're king of the land, you seem to have forgotten you are in fact king of a single room. Feel free to place as many eyesores on the wall above your bed as you wish to waste your little fortune on, but do not purport to tell me what _my_ house needs.'

Potter's shoulders hitched back. His chin jutted forward. His face shifted into full James Potter. Severus wanted to slap it off him.

'I guess I'll just go up to _my_ room and stay there!' he shouted. Severus's head thrummed, like a tuning fork to Potter's offense. 'I probably shouldn't even be down here, seeing as it's _your_ sitting room and not mine!'

He then bounded up the stairs and slammed the door behind him.

Severus tried sleeping again but could never quite make it. He read but the words swam before his eyes. He spent a ridiculously long time in the bathroom, captivated by his reflection in the mirror, pale and sunken: how long had he had these lines on his forehead? His chin hadn't always been as sharp. His face was striate with an index of fears, too big to live with but too cutting to ignore. Fear that he was becoming his father. Fear that he was becoming his mother. Fear that his parents would have hated what he'd become. Fear that if his usefulness to Albus had expired before time, he would have become meaningless to him. Fear that he would never love anyone the way he loved Lily. Fear that he didn't want to, fear of what that meant about him.

The house awed empty and silent, and Severus could hear every beat of his heart. He tried to get Potter to come out by telling him it was his turn to make dinner, which was an obvious lie. Potter told him he wouldn't wish to touch an oven that didn't belong to him, thank you very much, or purport to tell Severus whether or not his chicken should be eaten raw in his own house.

He would have to come out once dinner was ready, Severus told himself as he started cutting the onion. The boy needed to eat, and Severus was hardly going to deliver the meal to his bedroom if he refused to join him downstairs. He tried to promise himself he wouldn't do such a thing. It didn't sound convincing.

He needed this day to end soon, because his mood soured with every passing hour, and he didn't think he could take much more.

As if to prove his point, a spasm shot through his hand just as he'd grabbed the pot of boiling water to move it to the other burner, and the whole thing smashed on the floor, breaking two tiles in half and splashing burns on Severus's stomach and feet.

He propped himself against the counter, gritting his teeth to hold in a curse of pain. He could have easily levitated the pot, knowing his hands couldn't be trusted today. If he'd given it a second's thought, this could have been avoided. Fuck. Well, it was nothing anyway. He still had some burn healing potion in the back of a cabinet, readied weeks ago in anticipation of Potter's arrival. The tiles could be fixed. It was nothing to make a fuss about.

He felt strangely like he was going to cry, and he couldn't at all explain why he would.

Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Phenomenal. All he needed was a rescue by the Boy Hero.

'What's going on?' Potter asked. His tone bled with concern. Severus wished he would save it. 'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' he blinked away the fog and straightened. With a flick of the wand, he summoned the correct potion. 'I dropped the pot.'

He limped to sit on the sofa and tucked his shirt upward to access the hurt. Potter, who had followed him like a haunting, gasped. 'How did you even drop it?' he asked. 'Your hands are shaking really bad. Do you want me to do it?'

Severus could not imagine a thing he wanted less. 'Keep your hands off me,' he barked. 'It is nothing. I suffered nerve damage from the snake's venom, and it occasionally lets itself be known, that is all.'

He tried to keep in the wince when the potion made contact with burnt skin, but he'd stretched himself thin managing the various discomforts of the day. As ever, Potter was watching him like a hawk, and so of course he noticed.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

'Remind me, Potter, was it you who bit me, or was it the snake?'

The boy huffed. 'You know what I mean.'

Severus peeled off his socks. The feet looked only a little pink. 'Go back upstairs,' he told him.

'I'm fine here.'

'Last time I checked, you'd locked yourself in your room to make a statement, so go ahead and get back to it.'

'I don't want to anymore. You were yelling at me a moment ago to come out.'

'I've changed my mind. You can go stay there until you've starved.'

Potter made another noise of discontent, but he retreated from the room. He didn't go upstairs though, which shouldn't have been surprising: he was terrible at taking instruction. Severus heard him spelling the kitchen tiles whole, and then the hum of water as he filled the pot again. It wasn't his turn to make dinner, but the boy _had_ been too lazy to do as much as wash a single mug all day, so Severus supposed it was only fair, this once.


	5. March 7th, 1999

**March 7th, 1999.**

'I have to say, I knew your father was somewhat politically aligned with these extremists, but I'd no notion how deeply he'd been drawn into this chaos,' Lyre Selwyn was shaking his head with the sort of pity that was a message. The message spelled, you're fucked, Draco. I know it, you know it, we all know it. Fuck you, Draco. You have been kicked under the table and you may as well go ahead and lick our boots clean like a good house elf, because at this point, what else are you good for? But alright, Draco, let's play the game and pretend you're not an outcast, in the spirit of good fun.

'None of us understood until it was too late,' Draco nodded solemnly. 'I don't believe even my father fully knew just how far he'd gone, or that he'd managed to pull my mother and myself into this wretchedness.'

His robes felt itchy, but he knew that was all in his head. He'd spent the last few years being decidedly ill-at-ease, but at least after a Death Eater meeting he'd been well within his rights to scream into his pillow for the night. Also, his mother had been there.

They'd arrived fashionably late, which had cut some into the torture. Hermione had been determined to be on time, but then she'd met him in front of the Gryffindor common room looking like she was going to a funeral of good taste.

'Don't you have anything a little more—' She was going to take offense with whatever he said, so he settled for nothing.

'What? Is it too _girly_?' she hissed. 'Not _wizard_ enough? Not _expensive_ enough, maybe?'

The answer was yes on all three fronts, but he wasn't about to say that either. 'Remind me, how many societal issues are we expecting to solve tonight? Is it all of them?' She rolled her eyes, which meant he was winning the argument.

'Fine,' she huffed. 'Tonight, I'm playing your game. I'm playing the game until I've won and I'm the one setting the rules.'

This annoyed him so severely he barely spoke to her on the way to the dungeons, where Slughorn had transfigured several classrooms into a hall of glittering robes and misty cocktails. The fundraiser was for families of Muggleborn children who had been affected by the war or some such thing. He couldn't remember what it would pay for or how anything was decided. Hermione would know, but he didn't want to ask. He wanted instead to push her into the bowl of punch or something similarly childish. He wouldn't, because it would ruin her dress and she would be upset with him, and Slughorn would look at him like he'd been proven right. But it was a nice thing to imagine.

Draco no longer belonged in this world. Hermione belonged even less, no matter what the idiot Slughorn wanted to believe, and everyone would soon know it; but she didn't _need_ to belong, because there was a thing in her that did not care. Standing next to Hermione Granger, Draco felt acutely that his own personality was an arid, static, unexciting thing, a land of treasure chests that had been robbed of all treasure. Once, the glint from it had shown through his glossed hair and collars jerked defiantly open, and he'd believed that it made him different somehow from his friends and his family, that it was the sort of thing that glimmered off reflective surfaces and hinted at an ill-defined _more,_ that it was a new sort of special unique to Draco, that he would one day harness its power.

But the treasure had gone, if it had even been there in the first place, and without it, Draco was flat and uninteresting; his defiant collar cliché, his face a tired copy off an old print.

'A terrible shame,' Lyre was saying. Right. They were talking about Draco's father, his favourite topic in the world. 'This will cast a long shadow on the Malfoy name, I am afraid.'

This was the moment, of course. 'Oh, Mr Selwyn, have you met my good friend, Miss Hermione Granger?' Draco waved her over from where she'd escaped to chat with Longbottom. Probably harping on Draco, too. He had considered joining them, but Longbottom was a pretty scary person these days, and Draco hadn't always been all that pleasant to him. 'Hermione is our Head Girl, and she has been the chief organiser of our efforts here at Hogwarts to work the vulnerable students through trauma—Hermione, let me introduce Mr Lyre Selwyn—'

Greetings were exchanged.

He'd heard Hermione speak to teachers and other students plenty of times. They listened to her as if to a prophet. But here, among the balloons and silver plates, her intelligence got lost in the spaces between words, her intentions tangled with attempts at humour, her sincerity struck young and silly. Draco didn't understand it. He loved it though. His newfound affection for her had not, as he'd expected, erased opinions he'd previously held on Hermione Granger, it had merely been grafted onto them.

And now, she was with every word proving she wasn't one of them, and that meant Draco _was_ , if only for now. He dedicated a moment to that feeling, to the camaraderie between Lyre and himself, to catching his eye in shared amusement.

'Hermione will be involved in this new initiative, too, of course,' he stated it like a fact, which immediately made it so, even as she was opening her mouth to argue. 'Hermione's parents are muggles themselves, you see, so of course she is best suited out of the entire Prefect body to manage such a thing.'

'Oh, that's splendid,' Draco did his best to avoid Hermione's glare. 'It is always inspiring to see young witches like yourself taking on the onus of leadership.'

Draco thought he saw, then, the drop in Lyre's expression, when she looked him in the eye. It was the moment he realised what she was taking on, and it was not the onus of leadership at all, it was him, Lyre, right now, and everyone else in this room. She was taking on the world and it was tremendously easy to think that pathetic for its naivety and intensity and every other _ity,_ and laugh at it and arch eyebrows because it would never happen, the world was going to swallow her up whole; big ideas, Draco had learnt, weren't what anyone cared about because everyone only cared about power. But in that short moment, he saw it in Lyre's face: when you looked her in the eye, that first time before it became laughable, it was terrifying.

'I can just imagine, uh—' Lyre stuttered, torn from rhythm as the world shifted and righted again, 'I can imagine how difficult this time must be, emotionally of course, but financially, too, for these destitute muggle families. We have felt it ourselves, and of course our resources are significantly larger. I myself had to let three house elves go to cut back on costs, and I know many are attempting to live a little more frugally these days.'

Bloody hell. Not the house elves.

She had chivvied him about going down to the kitchens with her to look for his unlikely saviour until her disapproval eddied into his dreams, filling them with elves and earrings and meat tenderizers. He'd relented eventually, because it seemed she'd had the idea of friendship skewed by the co-dependent Heroes of Hogwarts triad, and assumed everything in his life was hers to become involved in. There was no point arguing with her. He hadn't thought any of the house elves in the kitchens looked more familiar than the rest, but at least he'd been given coffee and sandwiches.

Hermione had also taken the opportunity to explain to him the founding principles of S.P.E.W. Draco braced himself.

'So,' Hermione smiled in a way that was intended to be charming, possibly, but came out creepy, 'you've heard of others who've got rid of house elves?'

'Oh, yes, several! Draco, I imagine you've had to return yours—'

'Are house elves very expensive to maintain?'

'Well, they need to eat, don't they?' Lyre laughed. 'And the breeders charge quite a hefty sum, of course, as well they should, it is an investment after all.'

'That is a one-off fee, though, isn't it?' It was like something had shaken her awake. 'The breeder will not reimburse you even if you return the elf?'

'Not in this case, no, since there is no fault with them.'

'It must be a strain on the house elf market,' Hermione mused. 'I must have read a few statements by now, about purebloods letting house elves go. I wonder what will happen to them if the demand is so much less.'

'Like I've said, the economy,' Lyre made a huffing sound meant to convey his opinion on the very existence of such a thing. 'Wars have this unfortunate side-effect, and I don't expect anyone has much desire to throw a dozen-elf banquet on the ruins of the wizarding society.'

'Hm.' It was the patronising _hm,_ the 'I'm-tuning-you-out' _hm._ Draco despised it. It was having an effect on Lyre, too, he could tell, because he'd straightened a little, threw Draco a meaningful smile that was too bright for polite company, and joked,

'You are mighty interested in the matter, I see. Looking to acquire a house elf yourself perhaps, Miss Granger?'

Hermione laughed. 'Oh, over my dead body,' she said lightly. Draco choked on his drink. 'Draco, can I have a word with you, actually?'

He let himself be pulled through doors thrown open into the corridor, dressed up with green lampions and echoing in the low tones of an old gramophone. He wondered if Weasley and Potter ever felt like a serif to Hermione's stroke.

'That was horrendous,' he said. Her grip on his elbow had wrinkled his robes. He spelled them nice and smooth, then did the same to her dress, because Merlin knew she wouldn't have noticed in her state. 'I think you've been reading the rules off the wrong box, if this is you trying to play the bloody game.'

'Yes, yes,' she had no interest. 'Do you know which breeder the Malfoy house elves came from?'

'Well—'

'Or maybe it doesn't even matter which breeder, if you know any—although getting the one that Selwyn uses, that might be good. But the Malfoy one, too—in any case, this is exactly the sort of thing that S.P.E.W. should be about, you see? I've been looking for a way to start it up again, and it wasn't really working before, not in the way I was trying to make it, but now the climate has shifted. This is the sort of thing the wizarding world should know about, should be talking about. We have suddenly a number of elves without work, kept idle with their old breeders because purebloods are dropping them like hot potatoes, and not for any real reason, either, but because they're _symbols_ of status, and easy to discard and bring back on when it's alright to draw attention to yourself again, and some of them must have been working for these houses for years—'

'I could find out the name of the breeder my mother used,' he said reluctantly, already wondering how on Earth he would explain why he was asking.

'Brilliant!' she gave him a clap on the back. 'Good work, Draco,' as if he'd done anything, as if he'd wanted to be involved in any of this. 'Ooh, maybe I could get something out of Kreacher—I'll write to Harry straight away. We're going to do a proper investigation.'

Then, she flew off in a fluster, party forgotten.

Draco felt at once too old and too stupid to keep up.


	6. April 3rd, 1999

**April 3rd, 1999.**

Harry looked at the phone. The phone looked back at Harry.

'Have you got bored of listlessness and hysteria? Are you exploring insanity next?'

Snape manifested so suddenly, he made him jump. He was holding the largest mug of coffee Harry had ever seen. The mere smell of it would have woken up the dead, if they had any lying around. 'Has the phone challenged you to a staring contest?'

Last night, they'd had a breakthrough. Well, it was more that Snape had had a breakthrough and Harry had repeated it back to him and then followed into the lab and urged him on. He had said things half-remembered about potion stability, and the reappearance of scars, and blood magic, and Snape had said 'precisely,' and then talked about how this particular substitution would solve those issues and that they would need to test it as soon as it was done. Harry had smiled a lot and Snape had also smiled, though quite a bit less. It had felt exciting to partake in the frenzy of discovery, and it had felt like Harry could do anything in the world. He hadn't really understood all of the discovery, exactly, but he had understood the frenzy.

But by 3a.m., the frenzy had largely worn off and Harry had drowsed with his chin pressed to the research journal, lulled by the sizzling and slicing and Snape's whispered measurements. He'd been shaken awake some time later and told to go to bed. They had then spent much of the morning avoiding social interaction in favour of grumbling through sleep deprivation. This was the good thing about Snape, Harry supposed: he did not much care if Harry did not feel like saying a word to him all day, and though those days seemed like they were occurring less and less, it remained a source of relief.

'Is the new brew ready?' Harry now asked, sidestepping the phone issue. 'Do you want to test it now?'

'I'm having coffee now.'

'After you have coffee?'

'The potion was unsuccessful. I need to rebrew it this afternoon.'

Harry's eyes immediately went to Snape's hands. They were shaking again. 'Oh right,' he said carefully. This was a minefield where any step could prove to be his last. 'I can help you with the measuring and stuff.'

'I don't require your help.'

'Yeah, but I'll be bored anyway,' Harry lied. 'Also, you know, don't you think there's a connection, maybe, between staying up all night and, uhm, you feeling a little, uh, out of sorts? Maybe you should just take a nap instead of having all that coffee—'

'I am not a five-year-old, Potter!' Snape spun around. He was right in Harry's face. Harry wondered when exactly that had stopped being threatening. 'Now answer my question.'

At Harry's confused frown, he rolled his eyes. 'What are you doing with the phone, Potter?'

Harry said nothing. He knew he was on thin ice. But this was delaying the phone call, and that was all that mattered.

'Potter, I've asked you a question.'

'Oh, wait, you were talking to me?' he pitched his tone to surprise.

'Have you genuinely lost your mind? Who else would I be talking to—'

'Well, _Potter_ is a family name,' Harry pointed out sensibly. 'You might be grumbling to yourself about my father, or maybe just picking a bone with the entire lineage, I don't know. Oh, you know what would help? If you called me by my actual name. You've done it before, so I don't think you will spontaneously combust if you do it again, if that's what you're worried about.'

Snape stared at him for a beat. 'You are decidedly too perky for only having slept four hours.'

Actually, Harry's nightmares had woken him up after two, and he wasn't perky, just incredibly anxious, but he'd long ago stopped trying to argue.

'What are you doing with the phone, Mr Harry Potter, son of James, son of—?'

'Fleamont,' Harry supplied proudly.

'That is a ridiculous name.'

'Yep.'

'Potter, phone.'

'I'm just calling my—my Muggle family.'

He'd put it away long enough, he figured, and the phone, which functioned perfectly well unlike the one he'd had put into Grimmauld Place, made whimsical with magic and barely holding together— the phone pulled on his guilt every time he walked past it. And yes, it had been a rough night, but it had felt victorious and energised, too: because of it, Snape was able to joke even as his body let him down again, and Harry could pick up the damn phone and do the right thing. The air crackled with possibility and Harry wanted to pluck it loose.

'Well,' Snape seemed to approve. 'Get on with it, then.'

He took a sip of his coffee, eyes not leaving Harry's for a second. A challenge issued.

It was ridiculously manipulative, but Harry couldn't help himself. 'I will,' he said, like it was a threat.

He typed out the number with steady fingers, all shaking contained in his chest. He knew it by heart, of course. He wouldn't have been able to count how many times he'd called home from Mrs Figg's house to check if the Dursleys had returned from whatever trip they'd gone off on, back when he was too young to be left alone. Sometimes, he would sneak into the dusty corridor and call in early, knowing no one would be there to pick up, letting the signal ring out until it was choked off by the answering machine.

Snape went to have the rest of his liquid heart attack on the sofa. It gave Harry barely the illusion of privacy, and he wanted to call him out on it, but the complaint died in his throat when the line went silent, and then swelled with breath.

'Vernon,' the line said.

'Hi, Uncle Vernon,' someone said. They sounded like Harry. 'It's Harry. Potter.' Ridiculous. He wanted desperately to look up and check if Snape was listening, if he'd smirked at his stupidity. 'Could I speak with Aunt Petunia?'

'She's out.'

'Oh,' Harry swallowed around the burning disappointment of it. 'Well, I just wanted to let you know that I'm alright. The, uhm, the wizard who was trying to kill me, he's dead now, so—'

'Yeah, one of your sort came, told us the whole thing. I say good riddance to him.'

'Right,' Harry said. For a moment, there was silence.

'So.' A cough. A tentative breath. 'You're back in that school of yours?'

'No, actually, I've not gone back to H—to my school.'

'What are you doing then? You got a job or what?'

'Uh, not at the moment.'

'Not much of a surprise, is it?' The laugh sounded fake. 'I hope you're not calling to ask about moving back in. If you think we're going to waste more of our hard-earned money just because you're afraid of a bit of work, boy—'

'I'm not asking to move back in,' Harry said through clenched teeth.

'Oh,' he heard that same hesitation again. Even his uncle's breathing sounded false. 'Well, good.'

'Can I speak with Dudley?'

'No.'

'Is he out, too?'

Uncle Vernon cleared his throat. Harry thought he heard fear, though he had no idea what his uncle had to be afraid of. 'No, but he doesn't want to talk to you.'

Harry clenched his hands. 'Have you asked him?'

'Look here, boy.' He wondered what it would do to Uncle Vernon, if he were forced to say Harry's name. He used to say it, sometimes, when Harry was younger, but it felt different now, he thought. It felt _dangerous_ now. 'Dudley's a good boy, but he's not so good at looking out for himself. I know the, what's his name, your psycho wizard is dead now, but if I know you people, there'll be another one around the corner. Or what do you call them, one of those Demented things, or some other trouble, like it always is with you – so the best thing for my son is to stay away from all that, you see? We've gone through enough, haven't we?'

Acid rose to Harry's throat. 'I'm sorry,' he croaked, and he was.

'Yeah, well. I'll tell Petunia you've called, that you're doing fine, right?'

Harry nodded, forgetting his uncle couldn't see him. 'Yes, right. Okay.'

'Right. But don't call here again if you can help it. I'm—I'm just thinking about my family.'

He felt like he was outside his body, watching from above. Like the air was water, filling his ears and his lungs. 'Right. Sorry I called.'

'No, well, it's alright,' he sounded genuinely reassuring, and Harry hated that he _was_ reassured, for a second. 'Have a good life, right?'

'Right,' Harry said. Uncle Vernon cleared his throat again. The line went silent.

He put the receiver down. He looked up to meet Snape's eye. And then, like a switch flicked, suddenly he didn't want to cry anymore and he wasn't drowning, he was back in his own body and in control of his hands, and he was _furious._

'Happy now?' he asked Snape. 'Did you have fun?'

'What was that?' To his credit, he didn't sound happy. He didn't really sound like anything.

'What do you mean, what was that? I've told you my family hate me—' Harry did not miss the twitch. 'Oh. You didn't believe me. Of course you didn't believe me.'

'I will not apologise for doubting the veracity of statements made by a hysterical teenager in the midst of an emotional crisis,' Snape hissed. 'I am not defending the way your uncle spoke to you just now—'

'Kind of sounds like you are.'

'—but the past few years have been emotionally taxing and highly turbulent, and I would not be surprised to hear that these circumstances have put a strain on your relatives'—'

Harry laughed. This was so predictable it had stridden right past hurtful and into hilarious. 'So what you're saying is, it's _my_ fault. Of course it's my fault, when is it ever not my fault?'

Snape glared, but that had stopped being threatening, too, and Harry laughed again.

'I am saying that the situation is likely a little more complex than your family _hating you_ , Potter.'

'No, you're right,' Harry agreed. He rocked forward and back on the balls of his feet, buzzing with an energy he was a little scared of. 'You're right, it's real complex. Like, they did make me sleep in the cupboard under the stairs until I turned eleven, but then again, I talked back to them sometimes. Oh, oh, and I remember, one time, I got violent with my aunt. Yeah, I started hitting her, because they were taking Dudley on this amazing holiday by the sea, and he went on and _on_ about the waterpark, and I wanted to come, too. So, I threw a massive temper tantrum, and _then_ my aunt told me it would have been better for everyone if I hadn't been born. I get it. I guess it was pretty unfair of them to not want to bring me along in the first place, but then again, who _would_ want to spend the holidays with a violent four-year-old? You're absolutely right. It's all very complex.'

Then, he threw the phone at the opposite wall, missing Jordan's painting by an inch. It shattered into pieces, cheap plastic peeling undone. Harry wanted to undo more than the phone.

He ran upstairs and slammed the bedroom door behind him.

In no time at all, the door banged open again, and the phone was thrown back into his chest. On instinct, he grabbed at the receiver, the sharp pieces butting into his palm with a hiss of pain. They left behind pink lines but hadn't cut skin: disappointing.

'I don't care how hysterical you are, Potter, you do not destroy my property!'

'Just cast a bloody Reparo—'

'Heavens but you're stupid! This is an electronic device, I cannot cast a simple Reparo and get it fixed!'

'Fine, then don't cast a Reparo! Try leaving me alone instead!'

He was angry enough to meet Snape's eye. The look there did scare Harry, just a bit. 'Have you told anyone about this?' Snape demanded. 'And if you start spewing the names of your little friends, so help me God, Potter—have you ever told an adult? Did anyone know about this and done fucking nothing?'

Harry wanted to take a step back so much it hurt him. He took a step forward instead.

'Severus Snape,' he said clearly.

'—what?' They were close enough now that a droplet of his spit fell on Harry's cheek.

'You saw my memories when you taught me occlumency. I don't remember everything you saw, but I know for sure you saw me in the cupboard, and you saw me getting chased by Aunt Marge's dog, and much, much more.'

'I—that is preposterous. Those memories were completely stripped of context. I could have been watching a game of hide-and-seek gone wrong, or—'

'Fine,' Harry said calmly, though he felt anything but calm. 'Look, I don't blame you. None of it matters anyway, it's all in the past. But you don't get to come here now and get all outraged because the Dursleys abused me or whatever, when you did the exact same thing.'

Snape went completely white. It gave Harry a jolt of unpleasant joy. 'How _dare you—_ '

'Please, you _loved_ making sure that I was terrified of you! I guess you never locked me in the Potions cupboard without food for days or had me polish the classroom floor until my knees were all nice and bruised, so you know, thank you for that. All you did was repeatedly tell me I was as much a waste of space as my scumbag of a father. Oh wait, that's exactly what my aunt used to say, too! You guys should really get together someday—'

He was cut off by a violent jerk, momentarily startling him into losing breath, as Snape's hand clutched his shirt at the throat and pulled him up. Harry had to go up on his tiptoes.

There was only one reaction he could think of that would make things worse. He grinned.

'What, are you going to hit me?' he asked mockingly. 'My family never really went in for that. You'd get one up on them.'

Snape shoved him back. Harry's knees hit the bed and he fell on his ass on the mattress, with a bounce that felt just silly in the circumstances. Snape didn't hang around long enough to see. Harry heard his own door slamming, and then the one to Snape's room, and then there was silence.

He smoothed his wrinkled shirt. He wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to do now. He tried lying down, the broken phone pressed to his chest, but that felt stupid somehow, so he sat back up.

He briefly imagined cutting himself with the sharp plastic, like before, until he was drenched in blood and Snape had to drop everything to patch him up. But he didn't _really_ want to; he only felt like the moment called for some dramatic action. He laughed again, out loud, at himself and with himself, like a madman. If he hurt himself now, it would only be for attention. He had clearly not changed very much since he was five years old.

No, he needed to get a grip. Snape would be Snape, which meant he would be pointlessly theatrical about every little thing. Harry did not have to lean into it. The Dursleys hadn't treated him remotely right but he wasn't a little kid anymore so it hardly mattered, and though the phone call today had been a disaster, well, it wasn't as if he'd expected some grand reconciliation. He shouldn't let this bother him at all. He shouldn't be thinking about any of it.

He stood, gathered up the phone pieces into a bag, rubbed some of the colour off his face, and tiptoed downstairs. He would need to get a new phone at some point anyway – it had been silly, to break it like that – and he needed a walk.

He focused on the wind, the slowing of his breath, the swing of his feet. The coastline was shrouded in mist and Whitby, when he got there, sluggish with the weight of the afternoon. Soon, he found he felt nothing at all.

He got a new phone, much nicer-looking, the most expensive they had at the store. He wandered the streets down to the port and breathed in the funk of seafood and kelp. He strolled up the hill to the ruins of the Abbey, which Hermione had read something interesting about in a book titled _Magicked Monasteries,_ but he remembered only the title of the book and nothing else. He watched the sun fall lower and lower on the stones, until it dipped past the line of the furthest sea and night swept in with its chills and distant hoots.

He walked back up to Sandsend, his legs so heavy they'd near rebelled, a yawn perched in his ribcage.

'Hey, pillager!'

He turned to look at where Marnie stood on her porch.

'What's your bounty, love?'

'A new phone,' he lifted the box to show her. 'I've sort of wrecked ours.'

'A Viking's strength,' Marnie said appraisingly. 'Jordan's baked something today they've not put into a dictionary yet. You want to come in for tea?'

Harry thought about it. He imagined the rightness of their home. He recalled the way Jordan laughed at Marnie's jokes, so quietly it seemed like he wanted to save the laughter just for himself. The way the sofa was worn and stained and covered in ugly quilts that didn't match because Marnie had no aesthetic sense and Jordan had too much aesthetic sense and they bickered about it endlessly. He let it all tingle on his skin.

It was not the sort of home, he thought, that you could go into when you were empty. It housed people who were full, or at least at half capacity.

'No, thank you, I should really head back,' he said. 'Maybe I could drop in tomorrow.'

'I guess it is getting late,' Marnie smiled. Harry felt like he wasn't even human, compared to her. 'I'm off work tomorrow, so come in any time. Bring your uncle if he needs a break from his brooding.'

'He's not actually my uncle,' Harry didn't think it mattered, but it struck him as the sort of thing Snape might care about, now. 'He was just really good friends with my mum.'

'Oh right,' Marnie said. 'Well, that's sweet.'

For a moment, it was awkward. Fortunately, Marnie was good at untangling awkward knots. Harry wondered if he'd learn how to do that too, as he got older. 'Sweet dreams, pillager,' she said. 'Come tomorrow or we'll be bored.'

'Okay,' he told her, the caving in his chest growing deeper. 'I will.'

Snape's house didn't seem like it held much rightness. Instead, it smelled faintly of alcohol and the storm.

'Where have you been?' Snape asked him the moment he stepped through the door, and it sounded as if he'd wanted to curse him but had stopped himself in time. His hands, Harry noticed, were still trembling. His eyes were more vacant than usual. He looked ill and Harry felt instantly guilty.

'I went on a walk,' he said softly. 'And I've got us a new phone.'

He offered the box. Snape snatched it out of his hands, then tossed it on the sofa like he'd just realised he didn't want to touch it. 'There's no dinner,' he said without looking at Harry. 'Make use of your bloody phone and order yourself some food. They've brought more of those ridiculous leaflets.'

'Okay,' Harry said. He could have just made dinner himself, but Snape knew that. The entire conversation felt surreal. He wished Snape would yell at him again. 'What would you like?'

Snape snorted. It sounded ugly. 'Nothing. Get whatever you want.'

Then, he circled Harry and went into the kitchen, every footstep a stroke of thunder. Harry took the plastic off the phone, connected it and ordered pizza.

The quiet made his guilt worse. He shuffled into the kitchen, wondering if apologising would help.

Snape was leaning forward over the sink, the edges of the counter clasped between white fingers. His eyes were closed. He looked like he was trying very hard not to cry, or not to bang his head against the wall, or not to choke, or—it was unclear to Harry what he was trying not to do, but whatever it was, he was only just succeeding.

'Leave,' he said before Harry remembered to speak. 'Let me rephrase that so there is no confusion. Leave my sight. Do not leave the house, do not go buying any more phones. Go in another room. I need a moment alone.'

The moment stretched into five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. At one point Harry thought to himself jokingly that Snape was surely just dead now, and then he couldn't erase the image from his mind. He saw himself entering the kitchen to find Snape sprawled lifeless on the cold tile, over and over again, never living out the scenario past the first wave of horror.

Snape finally re-emerged once the delivery boy had come and gone, and Harry was halfway through his second slice. 'This one's pepperoni,' he indicated, not sure if Snape even knew what such a thing meant, 'and this is, uh, barbecue or something, I think. There's chips, too, if you want them.'

Without a word, Snape sat on the sofa next to him and picked up the greasy box of chips. He ate in a way that seemed to Harry like he didn't taste any of it.

It was stupid. It was all long past and unimportant and Harry hadn't even been thinking about it much lately. There was no reason for other people to know, or to be affected, because it couldn't change anything anymore, and now Harry was thinking about it again, too, and he didn't know what to say to make it better.

Snape didn't seem to know either. Together, they finished the pizza and spelled the boxes and bags away.

They didn't speak again that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> Ron and Hermione are coming to visit for the next two chapters; I will likely be posting these back-to-back on Sunday and Monday, since they are so closely tied together.


	7. April 19th, 1999

**April 19th, 1999.  
**

The afternoon slid sideways quickly, because as much as Hermione wanted to do a full tour of the Abbey, she understood her companions’ interest in magical history ended at precisely the point rain began. For a while, they clammed their jaws to stop teeth from clattering as they admired the view from the hill, boats coming into port from the dense grey that hid the horizon, trailing tendrils of mist and balancing precariously on the tempests of waves, but then Ron said that just watching was making him seasick and they abandoned all sightseeing aspirations in favour of a dark alley from which to apparate away.

They took over the sofa in the drawing room and warmed their socked feet in the glow of the fireplace, which they fed with scraps of old newspaper and dried pinecones. Their insides, they warmed with the butterbeer Ron had brought along, spiced and comforting.

It all felt bizarre to Hermione: Harry’s easy laugh, chatting nonsensically about the weather, the half-light of the dawning evening, Ron’s bare ankles showing from under his hitched-up trousers, stretched in her lap. There’d initially been a thread of tension, as Hermione and Ron settled into this new space, unaccustomed to Harry’s casual hosting, to the possibility that Professor Snape might emerge from wherever he’d hidden away and tell them off for putting their feet on the coffee table. But as the hours wore off, that tension had eased off Ron, whose body now felt molten beneath her hands, his smiles coming in full and uninhibited, his voice soaring loud. Hermione felt a separateness from him that she didn’t care for, but her own anxiety remained, curled too tightly in her chest to be forgotten.

She’d attempted to chivvy the conversation toward more serious topics, such as Harry’s breakdown just before New Year’s, but it hadn’t caught. The two of them were not in the mood for seriousness, and though Harry answered her questions, he did so in a way that made her feel foolish for even asking. Like it had happened to some other Harry, like this Harry had retained little memory of it, like it should be obvious.

Time here stretched, an hour the full scope of Hermione’s usual afternoon, the pattering of rain against the windowsills so ceaseless that she wondered if they should be breaking out the arcs, and yet they’d not _done_ anything. She could be researching Draco’s New Zealand cousin – ‘serious, dull, terrible at parties, sort of like you’ frankly wasn’t much to go on when trying to assume someone’s identity. She could be down in the kitchens, finding out the names of the elves who’d been let go when the school board decided to cut staff after a drop in student admittance. She could be sifting through the library’s archives, old pages of the Daily Prophet crinkling under her fingers, to better prepare for meeting Terence Thickey, Narcissa Malfoy’s favourite Elf Breeder.

Despite Harry and Ron’s peaking voices, despite the hum of the deluge outside, the house in Sandsend seemed quieter to Hermione than even the Hogwarts library, with that eery quiet that permeated skin and drew heaviness into bones. It made her feel on edge, restless and resentful.

Somewhere, a door thudded open and closed. Ron yanked his legs off Hermione’s lap and sat up straight.

‘Potter!’ came a summons. Hermione drew some satisfaction from no longer being the only one uncomfortable.

‘Mate, shouldn’t you—’ Ron murmured when Harry made no effort to move. Hermione straightened the collar of her shirt. Then, she did the same to Ron’s.

‘Potter!’ came again from the bowels of the house. Harry held up a hand. Eyes trained on him, they listened to silence for a good beat, until,

‘—Harry!’

‘Coming!’ Harry yelled before rushing out of the room.

‘This is weird,’ Ron declared. ‘If he comes in, you do the talking. I am too weirded out by the whole thing.’

‘What am I supposed to talk to him about?’

‘I don’t know, you’re good at talking to teachers, you’ll think of something.’

Voices drifted in through the door, diluted by distance and the thick walls. Hermione summoned the tentative mind map she’d created of the house, and determined Professor Snape and Harry must have moved into the kitchen.

‘Are you free next weekend?’ she asked Ron without looking.

‘Uh, yeah. It’s not Hogsmeade weekend though, is it?’

‘No,’ she felt suddenly nervous, though couldn’t fathom why he would say no. ‘But I’ve got something planned and I was hoping you might want to help me.’

‘Sure,’ he said immediately. Hermione felt terrible for not laughing at some of his jokes earlier.

‘I’m going to impersonate Draco’s cousin from New Zealand,’ she told him, ‘and I’m going to meet a House Elf Breeder to find out how many returns he’d had over the past year, and what he is doing with them. I thought we could pretend you’re my fiancé and we’re thinking of getting an elf for our new home.’

Ron stared at her. ‘I’ve got to say, I thought we were done with undercover missions when the war ended.’

‘Does that mean you won’t do it?’ She could do it on her own, of course, though it would be significantly more stressful: Hermione wasn’t a great actress and Ron knew more about pureblood customs. But she wanted to include him in this, because this was her life, now, this was all she could think about; this was important and he was important and maybe they could be important together.

‘No, I’ll do it alright,’ he laughed. ‘Just, you’re going to have to give me my backstory or whatever, yeah? Do I need to scavenge the Burrow for some family heirloom ring or something, so we can really sell it?’

Hermione pulled closer to him and explained. Tried to explain. His heartbeat was loud and steady in her right ear, and making it hitch and race when she unexpectedly whispered into his neck was more fun than carefully constructed schemes. The voices in the kitchen were arguing now and Ron was about to ask her whether they should go and intervene, she could tell, so she kissed him, desperate to prolong this feeling of unhurried relief.

After a while, they were interrupted by a cough. They jerked apart so suddenly Hermione thought she’d torn a ligament. Fortunately, it was only Harry, a little red-faced, watching them with a glib smirk.

‘I was out of the room for five minutes,’ he said as Hermione straightened her hair. ‘I’m afraid to imagine what I’d have found if I’d gone for ten.’

‘Is everything alright?’ Ron made the smart choice not to engage. ‘Should we go hang out in your bedroom or something?’

‘No, no, just, uh, are you guys hungry yet? Snape’s going to start on dinner.’

‘What, for us?’ Ron gaped. ‘Hermione, how can you tell if there’s poison in your food?’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve told him not to bother,’ Harry shrugged, ‘but you heard how that went. My advice is, whatever happens, just go with it, alright? He’s been a little—unhinged, lately.’

Ron and Hermione exchanged a look between them. Hermione thought maybe she should take the joke about poison at least a little seriously.

‘Have you not been getting along?’ she asked.

‘It’s fine,’ Harry looked off to the side. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to say it with her eyes on him. ‘It’s just that he’s sort of found out some things about the Dursleys. You know, how they weren’t all that nice to me. He’s not great at processing, big surprise.’

‘Oh,’ Hermione said. She wondered what things Professor Snape had learnt, exactly. She was positive there were a great many _to_ learn, most of which she only guessed at; all of which made her feel a strange combination of guilty, uncomfortable and oddly grateful. ‘How is he taking it?’

‘Well, he’s trying to be extra kind to me,’ Harry grinned, mood immediately restored, ‘which is so against his nature that it’s slowly destroying him from within. I think he’s got maybe a few weeks left.’

‘I’m trying to imagine what Snape trying to be kind looks like,’ Ron mused. ‘Blimey, that’s terrifying. How are _you_ taking it?’

She recognized it as a genuine question concealed in a joke. She had the impulse to take his hand resting on the cushion, so she did, and smiled to herself when it was squeezed.

‘It’s been a little tense,’ Harry admitted. ‘I don’t know, I feel like we’d got to some sort of harmony and now that’s all ruined. I get that this isn’t a comfortable thing to know about, for anyone, you know, and especially when— but I’m the one who has to live with it, and I’m managing it loads better. It just doesn’t help me much when people dredge it all back up, you know?’

‘Do you not think that maybe _you_ should?’ Hermione asked. ‘You know, dredge it all up? Because Harry, it can’t be healthy to keep it all bottled up—’

‘I’m not keeping anything bottled up, Hermione,’ Harry shook his head at her. ‘I’m honestly fine. I just prefer to live my day to day life without thinking about it, which seems pretty healthy to me, to be honest.’

‘Yes, but—’ Ron threw her a glance that seemed to advise against continuing, so she decided to change approach. ‘You know, I was in St. Mungo’s a few weeks ago. We have this first-year who’s having sessions every other week, and all the teachers were telling me how she’s been doing very well, so her head of house suggested we cut back on her hours. Agatha, she’s one of the Mind Healers, she told me no way, and I tried explaining that the girl has made lots of friends, she’s doing well in all her classes, she eats well, everyone’s saying she’s cheerful and engaged—she’s a Muggleborn, you see, and her parents were murdered by Voldemort last year. But she’s doing so well.’

‘Probably repressing,’ Ron supplied, nodding along as if he’d offered some insight that Agatha would have appreciated. Hermione glanced at Harry to confirm he found it hilarious, too.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘That is essentially what Agatha told me, too. She said that repression is actually a very useful mechanism a lot of the time, because you can’t always afford to let traumatic memories distract you from the here-and-now. That girl, for instance, she had to focus on finding her feet in the wizarding world, in a new school, in a new social setting and so on. But that’s temporary, because once that novelty eases off, when she catches a moment of quiet, that’s when it will all come rushing back.’

‘So I have to stay busy is what you’re saying,’ Harry grinned. ‘Great, how about we go on a stroll to the beach then, since it’s stopped raining?’

Ron groaned. ‘But the sofa is so comfy—and dinner’s going to be done soon—’

‘We’ll go quickly,’ Harry promised, ignoring the glares she was sending his way. ‘Come on, Ron, you’ve heard Hermione. If I don’t want to make bunk-buddies with Lockhart any time soon, I have to keep moving.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Harry Potter, The Boy Who Repressed" was this chapter's title in my original outline, so.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's read and left kudos on the story so far. I'll be uploading another short chapter when I get a free moment today, so depending on when you're checking in, it might already be up!


	8. April 19th, 1999 (II)

**April 19th, 1999 (II).** **  
**

Ron's strategy was to focus on the food. It wasn't hard: however brief, the walk down the beach had made him cold and tired in a way that called for a warm meal and an early bedtime. The cod tasted nice and so did the potatoes, and he had recently found he'd grown out of his dislike for all things green, though he hadn't said so to Mum, not wanting to give her the satisfaction. The salad had pomegranate seeds in it that looked like tiny rubies, and Ron would just busy himself enjoying those and not engage in conversation, thank you very much.

It wasn't as if there was much conversation to engage in. The shroud of silence over the table gave him the feeling that someone had died. Only Ron had been to a whole lot of wakes and people had actually _talked_ during those.

'So, how's your day been, sir?' Hermione addressed Snape, who had chosen to sit at the opposite end of the table to the three of them, making it seem as though he were having a completely separate meal. If the table had been a proper long one, like the one at Aunt Muriel's house, he would have probably done the same thing and then at least it would have been funny. As it stood, it was just awkward.

'Uneventful,' Snape said, and the conversation was concluded.

A beat of silence later, Harry cleared his throat. 'We went into Whitby, but we came back pretty quickly because of the rain.'

'I hope we didn't disturb you,' Hermione sent Harry a grateful glance. 'We tried not to be too loud.'

'You were unsuccessful,' Snape said without any feeling. 'Fortunately, there are such things as silencing spells.'

'Sorry,' Hermione said meekly. It didn't sound like her at all. Ron hoped it was only that she was tired. He thought maybe she'd been tenser than usual, today, though with Hermione, it was kind of hard to tell.

'We'll have to go try sightseeing again in the summer,' Harry said with forced cheer. 'Oh, do you know what Marnie's told me? Apparently, in the autumn, you can take a boat out and if you go far enough out, you can spot whales.' He turned toward Snape. 'Did you know there were whales here?'

'Did I know there were whales in the North Sea? Yes, Potter, I knew that. Now that you know, too, perhaps you can refrain from playing captain at open sea.'

'There's a guy that does it, obviously, you don't go out on your own. Marnie and Jordan have been, and it was, I think, ten hours, and they got completely soaked, they said.'

Snape grimaced. Ron hated to side with him on this, but he didn't particularly fancy spending ten hours on a boat at open sea. They had big waves there and big waves meant big rocking. 'Couldn't we just fly out and try to spot them from above?' he suggested.

'You're right! We should do that in autumn though. Marnie's said you're unlikely to see them now.'

No one said anything to this, though Hermione looked like she was already thinking of possible excuses. Ron put more salad on his plate. He was nearly done with the cod but there was plenty still on Harry's plate, which meant they were trapped for another five minutes at least. The day had been perfect until now. It had been quiet and slow and sleepy, and they'd all been in one room together with nothing to do. They should have done more of that, he thought, even if it meant going hungry.

'Food's really nice,' he said once the silence had become unbearable again.

'Oh, yes. Thank you, Professor,' Hermione added.

'Yeah, thanks,' Ron grumbled, feeling silly for not thinking of thanking him in the first place.

'Do you suppose that being a Potions Master has helped you become a better cook?' Hermione sounded like she knew it would be obvious to anyone she was grasping at straws, but was determined to push through nonetheless.

'No,' Snape said.

Ron bit his lip in something between amusement and second-hand mortification.

'They're not all that similar, are they?' Harry tried. Ron had to give it to him: out of them all, he sounded the most natural, even as he was talking bullshit. 'I mean, I used to think I'd be good at Potions because I knew how to cook, but that dream ended pretty quickly.'

He said it like a joke, but it wasn't all that funny. The tension in the room, already sizzling, skyrocketed. Ron stared down at his plate, afraid he was going to accidentally make eye contact with Snape, who looked ready to kill.

'Anyway,' Harry said lamely, clearly aware of his mistake. 'I like baking more than I like cooking. What, uh, what about you, Hermione?'

Had anyone ever died of awkwardness, Ron wondered. If they had, maybe Hermione would have read of it.

'I don't know much about it at all,' Hermione's voice pitched high. 'I never really cooked at home. I think the first time I'd tried was when we were, uh, camping out, last year.'

'That explains a lot,' he said, unable to help himself. She sent him a glare. Ron did not feel repentant. How could he, when she'd asked him just today to go on that insane mission with her, when she'd made it clear she wanted him there to help, when he apparently wasn't too boring or useless to be worth her time.

They finished their food in silence. By the time Snape spelled the dishes away, Ron had regained a sense of hope in the future. They had lived through this. They would never be the same again, but they had prevailed. He pushed his chair back to stand.

Then, Snape said, 'Sit. I'll bring dessert,' and hope died.

'I should go help,' Harry told them softly, then scurried to the kitchen after Snape.

Ron and Hermione looked at one another in horror.

'Maybe they'll let us skip it if you say you're dead tired?' he suggested.

'Me? Why me? You tell him you're dead tired.'

'Too tired for dessert? The man's seen me eat in the Great Hall for six years. No way is he gonna believe that.'

The hum of the kettle drifted in from the kitchen, and on its tail voices, tight with frustration.

'—and I don't like you acting like you're my servant all of a sudden,' Harry was saying over the clatter of cutlery. 'I can make tea and I can plate cake _fine_ —'

'Would you like a gold star? Go sit—leave it—'

What came next sounded almost enough like a struggle for Ron to get up, and then something shattered.

'Congratulations,' came a voice, promptly followed by Harry's protest, just before the door drew shut with a thud. Hermione was trying hard to pretend she hadn't heard anything.

A few moments later, Harry and Snape re-emerged. Snape placed the platter of cream puffs on the table with the force of a statement. Harry was carrying the tea and plates. His satisfaction as he poured and set out the cutlery, placing Snape's setting just to his left rather than at the other end of the table, indicated he had won this round.

Ron stirred milk into his tea. The cream puffs looked good at least. He picked up the platter to offer one to Hermione, then made to grab one himself, only for fingers to clamp around his wrist.

He startled so hard he nearly dropped the tray. It angled to the side, the puffs about to slide into Hermione's steaming teacup. With his other hand, he caught them just in time.

He stared at Snape, who released his wrist quickly.

'That one's for Potter,' he said.

'That's okay,' Harry intervened. 'I like raspberry best, but vanilla's good, too.'

For a moment, they were silent. Hermione took a bite of her pastry, eyes fixed resolutely on the table. Harry took a sip of his tea. Ron belatedly thought to put down the tray.

Then, Hermione giggled straight into her puff. At the sound, Harry snorted. His tea came out through his nose.

'For heaven's sake,' Snape threw a napkin at him, but Harry had more interest in laughing, hunched low over his plate so that the tea dripping down his chin wouldn't get on the table. Hermione was laughing, too, like she had never found anything more hilarious in her life, clutching her stomach and gasping for breath. Her puff had fallen apart in her hands, now covered in cream. The sight of her made Harry laugh again, and the sight of him made her laugh again, and they were thus trapped in a loop that wouldn't end until one cramped too hard.

'I think I shall go back to the civilised end of the table,' Snape said, though he didn't move, instead fixing Harry with an overtly serious look that of course only made him laugh harder.

'You mind if I join you?' Ron said, hiding his laugh. 'Some of us would like to enjoy our tea in peace.'

'Of course, Mr Weasley,' Snape said with magnanimity. Hermione was trying to wipe at her tears with the wrist that didn't have cream on it. Harry sounded like he was going to expire at any moment, now folded halfway over Hermione's head as they attempted to find support in one another.

Ron picked up the vanilla cream puff and grinned into his first bite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter hadn't even been in the outline at all, but then I couldn't *not* write the awkward dinner scene.
> 
> On Thursday, Harry gets a letter and dives into the past for a little while. Meanwhile, thank you all for reading!


	9. April 26th, 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the dusty quietude of Grimmauld Place, boxes of the past could be opened safely. The place swam in the past already: there was little that could help it and little that could make it worse. ___

**April 26th, 1999.**

_Dear Harry,_ the letter read, in a blocky hand Harry normally associated with children.

_I tried asking Mr Dedalus if you had a phone or something but he doesn’t know. I’m not sure wizards have phones but he said he would send you this letter and the box by owl. I hope it gets to you._

_We were cleaning out my bedroom because I still have lots of old toys I don’t use anymore, and Mum said to clear out your room too. I didn’t want to let them at first, but then Mr Dedalus said to me that you’re rich in the magic world and you can afford your own house, so I figured you wouldn’t be coming back to live with us anymore. We found some stuff of yours in the desk and behind furniture and stuff, so that’s all in the box. I’ve also put some chocolate in there because I’ve got loads from Aunt Marge for getting into college, but I’m on a diet again (!!!) so I can’t have it anyway._

_I hope you’ll give us a call and that we can meet sometime. Mum and Dad don’t have to come if you don’t want them to. If you want to write back, can you send it to Mr Dedalus because you know how they are with owls._

_Best,_

_Dudley_

It was the third time he’d read the letter, but the first time he would be opening the box. He’d told Snape he was going to Grimmauld Place for the afternoon to sort through some stuff he’d left behind, which was an okay lie told for a stupid reason: what was he afraid of? That Snape would barge into his room as Harry was going through the box and demand to know where it had come from?

Maybe it wasn’t a concern over anything quite as tangible as that. Maybe it was just that Sandsend was Sandsend, and it had been marred already by the past in a way Harry didn’t care for. He would protect it from further desecration by any means necessary.

In the dusty quietude of Grimmauld Place, boxes of the past could be opened safely. The place swam in the past already: there was little that could help it and little that could make it worse.

The cardboard creaked beneath his fingers. Sat cross-legged at the foot of Sirius’s bed, he felt in that small moment more alone than he had in a long time.

First came three books. There was _History of Magic_ , volume two; one of Lockhart’s _Voyages with Vampires_ , tarnished with something sticky that could have been jelly; and an old copy of _Matilda_ he’d once stolen from his primary school library. He flipped through them, tracing the notes he’d made on the margins: he’d never owned books as a child, and those he’d sneaked out of libraries and Dudley’s room and Mrs Figg’s bottom shelf, he invariably adorned in sign after sign of ownership, with crayons and pencils and broken glitter pens he’d found in the bin. It was a poor habit. He did it anyway. Just the day before, he’d sat by the fire and drawn a dubious likeness of Artemis into his copy of _Dark Magic: A History,_ and Snape had asked him acerbically whether he’d run out of spare parchment. Harry had thought the comment blindingly hypocritical, since he _knew_ what state Snape’s sixth-year Potions manual had been left in, and Snape knew he knew, and Harry knew that Snape knew he knew. But this was just one on the long list of things they didn’t talk about, so he couldn’t even call him out on it.

He set the books aside, knowing he should dispose of them but wanting to delay the moment. Next came the 1995 calendar, empty except for the red crosses he’d used to demarcate the approaching end of his summer sentence. Then, two joke candy wrappers, from a time before Fred and George had developed a logo. A stack of parchment, creased and folded over, filled with handwriting he recognized.

They were essays, most of them. One unfinished, abandoned midway through when a younger Harry had spilled his ink over the page and hadn’t known how to spell it off. Another scribbled so haphazardly he’d known it was a Divination assignment even before he spotted Trelawney’s jarring script on the margins, advising him not to ‘shy away from the story the inner eye is attempting to tell.’

This one, he must have written in his first or second year, quill still unsteady in his hand and the letters bulky. He read through it now with a smile, recognizing the childish turns of phrase that he hadn’t been aware of then, easily spotting the more complex wording fed to him by Hermione or half-copied from a book. _I advise that you look up the definition of plagiarism,_ Snape’s flowy script was telling a twelve-year-old Harry. He swiped a thumb over it, gathering the crumbs of desiccated ink on the pad of skin. He had thought Snape possessed of mind-reading abilities, because he could always tell when Harry had been less than original. Now, he realised it was simply that he hadn’t been as subtle as he’d thought.

He had been so young, he could hardly grasp it. How could he have believed so strongly in the absoluteness of his experience, how could he have preserved these memories of himself as _himself_ , when he hadn’t been himself at all, he’d been an eleven-year-old who struggled to decipher his teachers’ cursive and thought he was being sneaky when he swapped a verb in the sentence he’d copied from his manual?

The essay at the bottom of the stack was for Transfiguration and written in a sloppier, more self-assured hand. It was Ron’s. Harry expected he should have been surprised to find it here, but wasn’t: they used to swap books and borrow parchments and dip their quills in the same ink. A void caved suddenly in his stomach, the feeling of nostalgia cresting until it wasn’t nostalgia anymore, it was a deep yearning: he wanted it again, that oneness, that coexistence, the identity shared and certain.

He folded his plagiarised second-year Potions essay and slid it into his back pocket. He wasn’t sure he would actually show it to Snape: theirs was hardly a past to look back on, and he didn’t want the man’s anger to tear at the warmth he felt handling it. It was nice to imagine he would show him, though, and that they could both be normal about it.

_Matilda,_ he would keep as well. Maybe there was nothing normal about him after all: missing Hogwarts was one thing, but missing his childhood was surely a sign of a devolving mind.

A broken crayon lay at the bottom of the box: it was the plum purple he’d disliked. On the first page of _Matilda_ , he’d outlined his hand with it. He remembered it now like no time at all had passed: squinting in the dim light of the cupboard, holding in the squirm as the crayon caressed the inside of his fingers, the frustration when the outline came out jagged and not half as nice as when he’d seen his aunt do one for Dudley. He’d drawn himself long monster claws to make up for it.

It shouldn’t have been a good memory. The cupboard door had been locked. The book had been stolen. His hand had been so terribly tiny. But it _felt_ good to remember, he didn’t _want_ to stop, and he felt that yearning again, deep and dark and entirely misplaced.

There was a sound downstairs. Harry straightened, his grasp on the flimsy paperback slipping.

Then, there was nothing _but_ sound.

Voices and footsteps, clatters and clangs and thuds, and had Kreacher been organising school trips to the Black residence behind Harry’s back or what?

Feet thundered on the stairs. Harry gripped at his wand, scrambling to stand only to slip on Lockhart’s useless book; his head knocked against the bedpost before he’d managed to find purchase, the burst of pain bringing him neatly into the present.

He eased the door open with a foot, wand at the ready. The tunnel vision from the bump lingered, but it was enough to see Ron and Hermione, halfway up the stairs and struggling with each other’s buttons, and thank God for that, because there were things Harry couldn’t unsee.

‘Hey!’ he yelled, mostly to cover up the breathy sounds they were making, and then lunged forward to grab at Hermione’s wrist when she startled back and off the stair, ankle twisting toward an unpleasant drop.

‘Oh,’ she wheezed as she awkwardly straightened, shrugging his hand away. ‘Oh God, Harry. What are you doing here?’

‘It’s my house,’ Harry pointed out. He was working very hard on not looking at Ron, who was trying to button up his shirt, red-faced and mute. ‘So, you know. I’m here.’

Downstairs, something banged. A shrill voice made a happy exaltation. Harry realised that if he went to investigate, he could avoid conversation.

He pushed his way between them, padded down the stairs and followed the noise into the sitting room. He blinked. When he opened his eyes, the house elves were still there.

There must have been at least twenty. Thirty? Fifty? They were moving about and talking, apparating and disapparating and emerging from the kitchen and back in, impossible to keep track of and impossible to conceptualise as static beings. They were events, there and not, hundreds and hundreds of them one after the other.

‘What—’

‘I was going to tell you, Harry!’ Hermione was just behind him. ‘I was going to Floo call you in a moment, I swear, but all of this, it’s happened so fast—Ron and I, we’ve gone to see this elf breeder, remember, I’ve told you about all those purebloods returning their elves, right? And, well, it turns out that this breeder wasn’t taking his back at all, and it’s not just him, either, even though they’re obligated contractually _and_ by wizarding law, only they figured, since there’s no demand for elves, they’re not going to bother paying for their upkeep! Can you imagine?’

Harry nodded lamely, not entirely sure he was following. ‘You didn’t _buy_ all these elves, did you?’

Ron snorted. Hermione looked incensed. ‘Of course not! We told him we were going to get back to him, and then we went and started asking around, and we found this elf in Diagon Alley who told us about these homeless elves who’ve been hanging around—anyway, we found them, and then they led us to the others, and—’

‘And we’ve sort of invited forty-three elves to stay at your place,’ Ron concluded. ‘Give or take. Sorry, mate.’

‘I’m so sorry, Harry,’ Hermione pleaded. ‘This isn’t a permanent solution, of course, but they’ve got nowhere else to go if their breeders won’t take them back, and if we have them all together in one place, that is such an incredible source of information, and we can—I’m going to take this to the Prophet, or—I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, exactly, but once this gets out, it’s—it’s so big, Harry, I had no idea, this is against every house elf protection law imaginable and get this—Thickey, that breeder, he’s sold some elves to Hogwarts, and it turns out, the school board pushed through a motion to fire several elves, too, because of the drop in attendance—which means some of these homeless elves have come from Hogwarts! Can you imagine?’

Excitement shone in her eyes. Ron’s face was still red from mortification, but it was set with satisfaction, too. They looked nothing alike, yet stood identically poised, like they were one model painted for distinction.

Harry imagined telling her no.

He didn’t want to, of course not, because why would he? But he imagined her face falling. He imagined the easy happiness fading from Ron’s expression as it twisted in surprise. He imagined telling her something like, _my house my rules,_ which sounded like the kind of thing Uncle Vernon might have said. Or Snape. He imagined telling Snape that they had this in common, too, stoking the flames of guilt and resentment, the hurt on his face.

‘Don’t worry about it, Hermione,’ he managed, jaw tight. ‘Honestly. They can stay however long they want. They’ll need money for food, right?’

‘Oh, no, Harry, we’ll figure it out, we’ll start up a fund or the Ministry—’

‘No, I know, but that will take a while. Like you’ve said, this is a right mess. But for now, I’ll ask Gringotts to send in some. Just tell me how much—’

Hermione embraced him. He imagined taking it back now, her body tensing in shock. She squeezed his back in gratitude. He didn’t deserve it.

After that, the elves made dinner. There was food everywhere, piles of it on the floor and the table and the chairs, and Harry, Ron and Hermione were pushed onto the sofa and offered a selection of dishes as the elves sat about on every possible surface, exchanging food and conversation, courteous when watched but increasingly assured in the crowd. Hermione looked full to bursting though she’d barely touched her food. She told Harry all about how ‘amazing’ Ron had been, how he’d got this or that piece of intelligence, how he’d made this or that comment at the exact right time, and Ron allowed her to go on while smiling contentedly into his plate. When she fell silent to munch on her meal, he spoke up, the conversation thus never disrupted. They were like two arms, Harry thought, of one and the same person.

He could show them the old essays. But they were too taken by their accomplishment and visions of the future, it would only be awkward if he suddenly brought them up. They’d pretend to be interested, of course, but he couldn’t take being humoured.

An ancient elf, grown over with white hair and wrinkled around the mouth, approached Harry with a plate of sausages.

‘You are Harry Potter,’ he croaked. ‘You are young master Teddy Black’s godfather?’

People tended to come up with a few defining features before that, but he supposed it was true enough.

‘Yeah,’ he said, then realised, ‘wait, did you say Teddy _Black_?’

‘Yes, Master Potter. Tabby’s heard all about the young master from Kreacher, sir. Will he take control of the house once he is come of age, Tabby wonders?’

Harry would need to have a discussion with Kreacher. Even as he thought it, he realised the chances of convincing the elf to refer to his beloved little master as a Lupin rather than a Black were slim to none. ‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘Maybe. How do you know Kreacher?’

‘Tabby knows many elves,’ Tabby shrugged. ‘Kreacher was buying a toy from Tabby for the young master and Tabby was curious, not a crime.’

‘Wait, do you mean the cups? A set of wooden cups?’

‘Yes, sir. Tabby works with wood, his magic agrees with it, sir.’

‘Tabby,’ Hermione leaned in suddenly. ‘What do you mean, he bought them from you? I thought house elves didn’t handle money?’

Tabby huffed. ‘Money! Tabby would not dirty his hands with gold!’

‘I don’t mean any offence,’ Hermione added quickly. ‘I’m just curious.’

Tabby eyed her suspiciously but seemed to decide there was little harm in it. ‘Tabby sold it to Kreacher for seals, Miss.’

‘Seals?’

He lay one small hand flat, then snapped the fingers of the other. Several red seals appeared on the open palm, each bearing a different crest. Harry supposed they must have been taken off correspondence after it had been read and discarded.

‘And house elves exchange these with each other? To buy things?’ Hermione’s eyes shone. She seemed unsure whether she would be allowed to touch, so her hand hovered in mid-air, awkward and earnest. ‘How have I never heard of this?’

‘Why would Miss hear of it? Miss is not a house elf,’ Tabby reminded her, sounding like he worried over the state of her mind. ‘Would Miss like a sausage?’

Hermione shook her head, then nodded, then frowned as she seemingly realised she hadn’t understood the question. Ron rolled his eyes at Harry and snagged a sausage off the platter to place on Hermione’s plate.

‘No, thank you,’ Harry said when the platter was pushed toward his chest. He didn’t feel particularly hungry, and Snape expected him for dinner. A house elf invasion should have been a fair excuse for skipping a meal, but Sandsend was an upside-down world of no reason.

Tabby gave a small bow, then lowered himself onto the ground to Harry’s side to consume his sausages in silence. Hermione was talking about currencies and clandestine economies, most of which Harry didn’t understand.

He imagined kicking Tabby in the back of the head. He sat near enough that it wouldn’t have been a hard feat.

Last week, he had cancelled his visit with Teddy. This was why.

He tore his eyes away from Tabby and fixed them on his plate. This was all Snape’s fault, for silently hyper-fixating on the past. This was Ron and Hermione’s fault, for being better people than Harry was. Whoever Harry was. In the claws of death at Hogwarts, in his cramped cupboard at the Dursley’s, he used to at least know that much.

He was supposed to be getting better. Instead, he felt like he was only getting worse, in an entirely new way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a downer ending, but Harry's just In A Mood in this one, isn't he.
> 
> Thank you all for reading. Draco's POV coming on Sunday.


	10. April 28th, 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _‘I wonder if I’m making a mistake,’ Hermione stated suddenly. Something skittered in the nearest patch of black, but when Draco pointed his wand at it, it revealed itself as fancy. ‘My name will be on that article. I am stirring a pot no one wants to touch, and that’s the opposite of what I’m meant to be doing, isn’t it? ___

**April 28th, 1999.**

'Hey, Malfoy.' A foot jammed into his hip. The robes were lined yellow, and the knee was level with Draco's face: a tall Hufflepuff. 'Did you get lost? I'm sure mummy will come find you eventually if you just stay put, yeah?'

Draco told himself he was perfectly comfortable on the library steps. He didn't stand up.

He knew how this went: most of these cowards had never learnt to bite and would quickly get tired of his silence and scurry away to their dorms, unwilling to risk hanging around long enough for 'mummy' to come back.

Still, the muscles in his neck seized up. Most of them, yes, but his Christmas attacker was somewhere among the mass, and Draco never looked up to meet their eye not just out of pride, but also because he was busy watching out for the glint of a knife.

He couldn't even make himself walk down the few corridors to his own dorm. It had come to that.

Frustrated with Draco's apparent deafness, the Hufflepuff jogged off across the landing to join his friends, and just then, Hermione emerged from behind the corner, immediately throwing a suspicious glare their way. 'Curfew starts in two minutes,' she said, and like cowed children they ran, grins tucked into chins. Draco stood.

It had come to this: Stockholm syndrome. He'd been taken hostage by Gryffindor's resident Miss Better-Than-Thou and enlisted as a pet project, and now he couldn't even walk down to his own common room without her.

'And how does that make you feel?' his Mind Healer would have asked. Draco had seen her a few times now but still didn't remember her name, which surely proved some point about exactly how senseless the experiment had been. He'd only signed up for an excuse to get away from Hogwarts and sneak into Janus Thickey Ward to visit with Goyle. He had told her as much during his latest appointment, too. She had asked for honesty after all.

How did it make him feel to be Hermione Granger's charity case? Well, it made him feel like he was living a lie. He wasn't her friend. He didn't care about the things she cared about. He didn't give a toss about the bloody house elves or the History of Magic essay. But he still lived on as if he _did._

'Why do you get involved in something that holds no interest for you, then?' his Mind Healer had asked. 'You could be expending that energy someplace else, on something you do care about.'

He didn't care about anything else either. So what did it matter?

'Good news,' Hermione said as she led him down the corridor. She had bags under her eyes yet radiated energy; Draco felt like a black hole. 'I've arranged to meet Rita Skeeter in Hogsmeade this Saturday. Since we've gathered so much intel ourselves, she thinks she could probably get the article out on Monday.'

Draco swallowed. This was thorny ground. 'Are you sure Skeeter's the right pick for this?' he asked. 'Have you considered she might print out some perversion of—'

Hermione snorted. 'Oh, I'm not worried about Rita Skeeter,' she announced with debilitating confidence. Draco thought it made her sound stupider than she actually was, but he pretended it hadn't annoyed him. 'I have leverage.'

'Leverage?'

Hermione glanced his way. She was doing some of her own balancing of sincerity and boundaries. He tried to ignore the pang of hurt.

'You remember the beetle she used to get her scoop from you, during the Triwizard Tournament?' she sounded tentative. Unsure whether or not to lie, Draco hesitated, and thus squarely missed the window for dishonesty. He nodded. 'Well, I don't know what she told you, but that was her. She's an unregistered Animagus and I'm magnanimously keeping it out of public knowledge.'

He supposed that made more sense than his Magical Beetle Messenger theory. 'Oh, right.'

'I figured it out in fourth year,' Hermione smirked, 'and I kept her in a jar for most of the summer. So, as I've said, you don't have to worry about Rita Skeeter.'

In a _jar?_ Draco was now worried about an entirely new thing.

'I can't say I have much sympathy,' he allowed. 'Woman has always been the worst kind of half-blood.'

Immediately, her shackles rose. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

'Oh, you know how half-bloods are.'

'No, actually, I don't know how half-bloods _are._ '

'All I mean is, with Muggleborns, at least they start with nothing and they know it. They build themselves from the ground up, like you. I can respect that. Half-bloods want every biscuit off the plate and think they deserve it, too, without ever doing anything to earn it. They've no allegiance except to themselves.'

'You do realise how you sound?'

'It's true.'

'Harry is a half-blood, you know.'

'Well, I didn't say _every_ half-blood was like that. It's a generalisation. And Potter's a Muggleborn more than half-blood, where it matters.'

Hermione huffed. 'I think if you took a moment to actually consider the weight of all these exceptions you're allowing, you'd find your generalisations don't hold water.'

'Did you not hear the part where my generalisations referred to you as a self-made woman? An inspiration to the entire wizarding community? A heroine—'

'Yes, well, I'd rather be all that because I'm Hermione, not because I'm a Muggleborn.'

'Muggleborn is part of Hermione. You can't pick and choose with identity.'

The chill of the dungeons seeped from the floors. They were approaching the Slytherin common room now, their footsteps echoing wetly in the silence. Draco drew a breath to smell the air, feeling his bones settle with the familiar notes of damp.

Hermione dallied before the final turn. 'I have rounds for another two hours tonight,' she told him, looking to the left of his head. 'Do you want to keep me company?'

'Sure, why not.' His Mind Healer would have said something about how you couldn't build a friendship on guilt – or pity – but sometimes, like now, Draco thought maybe that wasn't all there was to them.

They climbed stairways together and skulked across shapes of fluttering light, their shadows long and parchment-thin. Draco remembered these nightly patrols from the time he'd been a prefect himself: the initial exhilaration of power wearing off into long hours of exhausted boredom. But tonight, time spooled around itself, and though Draco was as tired as any day, he found he might have worn the night down with walking if he needed to, the quiet soothing yet thrumming with opportunity, every corner a tucked-away secret to be unravelled and every thought a possible seedling of a dispute to be waged.

'I wonder if I'm making a mistake,' Hermione stated suddenly. Something skittered in the nearest patch of black, but when Draco pointed his wand at it, it revealed itself as fancy. 'My name will be on that article. I am stirring a pot no one wants to touch, and that's the opposite of what I'm meant to be doing, isn't it? No amount of ingratiating myself to your rich friends is going to help. What if I'm killing my career before it's even begun, you know?'

'I know,' he lied. His future had been dead for months. 'But I'm not sure what else you expected from yourself.'

'Oh, thanks,' she huffed. Their voiced had dipped into whisper, odd in the deep quiet of the sleeping castle. It wasn't yet midnight, and Draco knew the common rooms and dorms still buzzed with conversation, but they were faraway islands, and in the ocean that awed between, it felt as though the two of them were the only people alive.

'You were always going to do something like this,' he explained, pleased at the thrill of putting into words thoughts only half-formed. 'And you were never going to play and win, because the game and you, you are—antithetical.'

He couldn't see her face but heard the rush of her exhale. 'Yeah,' she murmured. 'I think so, too. I only hope my way can still get me somewhere.'

'Weasley's doing alright for himself, isn't he? I suppose you can always be his housewife if it comes to it. You have about fifty house elves now, so it should be easy enough.'

She shoved at him. As he caught balance, he almost laughed. It halted halfway up his throat and snagged on some other emotion he didn't care to examine. It was one thing not to have laughed in months; another to ponder on what that said about you.

Hermione spoke more on house elves and the article and her theories of the fallout. Draco stayed silent. They caught two fifth-years snogging in an empty classroom and Hermione took points. Draco stood by and waited for her to be done, counting his breaths.

She was the perfect choice of friend, really, for someone like him: unable to undertake any action whatsoever, he let her pull him along, and she had too much momentum to mark the extra weight.

'Are you going to let McGonagall know in advance?' he asked softly as they lugged themselves up the steps to the Astronomy Tower. Their breaths left a trail of condensation in the thin air. 'The scrutiny will be on Hogwarts more than on any of the families who fired elves, you realise.'

'I know, though I'm not exactly happy about it,' she shrugged. 'This isn't Professor McGonagall's fault, it's the school board's. But I'm not giving anyone any warning. Why would I? Because it's fair play? Was it fair play to leave those elves out to starve? We want maximum impact and that means sometimes we have to choose sides. I'm siding with the victims.'

It was the authoritative tone of a revolutionary about to set fire to a government building, Draco thought. He didn't care about the house elves, he didn't care about McGonagall, his name wouldn't be anywhere on that article. Still, he felt, stupidly, a surge of power. He stomped it down.

At the top of the tower, they stopped and breathed in the night. Draco did his best to focus on the sky and not the influx of memories, but he was doing a rotten job.

'Oh, Merlin.'

When she said it, she sounded exactly like him, Draco realised.

'This is where Professor Dumbledore—isn't it? I'm sorry. Do you want to go?'

He didn't feel up to speaking, so he only nodded. On their way back down, he thought again about his own hypocrisy: his life destroyed, he had taken to pretending he was living this one, a life that belonged to someone else, to someone he wasn't.

He had explained it to his Mind Healer last week. She had looked at him for a good ten seconds, and he knew because he was counting his breaths as he stared down into his lap, and then she'd said,

'Why can't it be yours?'

He hadn't said anything back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, reviewing and leaving kudos!
> 
> Big breakthrough chapter coming on Thursday - I'm excited to share it with you all.


	11. April 29th, 1999

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _With the way Snape was staring at him, you would have thought Harry had just confessed to murder._  
>  _'Kindly explain to me how one fails their Apparition Exam after spending two years illegally apparating up and down the country? No, do explain, Potter, because I find this genuinely impressive.' ___

**April 29th, 1999.**

He had failed.

'You what?'

With the way Snape was staring at him, you would have thought Harry had just confessed to murder.

'Kindly explain to me how one fails their Apparition Exam after spending two years illegally apparating up and down the country? No, do explain, Potter, because I find this genuinely impressive.'

Harry wished he could explain. His brain was a live of static. He had splinched, leaving behind a good chunk of the skin over his right shoulder blade, and he hadn't even realised until someone gasped, and the hand he'd used to feel at the wetness down his back had come away red.

'I've asked you a question, Potter.'

Another Harry could have made it all into one big joke, he thought. He would have laughed as he recounted the story in Snape's kitchen, because _of course_ he'd never splinched himself apparating before, but he tried it once during the exam and immediately screwed up. 'Clearly I am meant for a life of crime,' he'd have told Snape, and then he would have said he'd signed up for a retake soon, and then Floo-called Ron to joke about how much the skin off the Chosen One's back would go for on the black market.

'Gee, thanks,' he said instead through clenched teeth. He'd pushed his hands into his pockets to hide their tremble. ' _What happened, Harry? Did you splinch anything, Harry? That sucks, Harry, I'm sure you can get it right next time—_ '

'I was sure you could do it the first time,' Snape echoed his mocking tone. 'Excuse me, I was under the impression I was dealing with an adult wizard long-experienced in the delicate arts of apparition and exam-taking, not a five-year-old. Were the examiners too strict, Harry? Were the other children mean? Do you need a nap to recover?'

'Why do you have to be such a dick?' Harry yelled, because Snape had it right, actually: the other students had stared at him, and the examiners had stared, and Ron and Hermione and Snape and everyone expected Harry to pass with flying colours, and yeah, he could go in for a nap right about now, since he'd spent much of last night battling insomnia.

'You do not swear at me, Potter. That is your first and final warning, is that clear?'

'Crystal.' Harry pushed his way to the entry hall and yanked open the closet door. The ironing board inside shifted and screeched against the wall.

Because he didn't understand the concept of reading the bloody room, Snape had followed, and he was still talking. 'When is your retake?'

'Wait, let me think,' he shoved the board away until he managed to find grip on the handle of his broom. 'I think it was—right, none of your fucking business. I'm going flying. Maybe you can try to be less of an arsehole when I get back, though I doubt you'll manage it.'

Snape slammed the closet door shut.

'Thank you,' Harry said courteously. He winced as the weight of the broom pulled on his back, where the wound ached steadily despite the Dittany, like an itch he couldn't scratch. If he flew high enough, maybe he could freeze the feeling away.

'You are one step away, Potter—'

'What, from getting another warning? I thought you'd given me the final one?'

Snape's fingers dug into his arm. If he wasn't feeling so miserable, he might have appreciated the physicality of it: Snape was usually too much of a coward to get anywhere near him when they argued, lest he frighten the poor trauma victim. Though Harry hadn't ever pushed him quite as hard, he supposed. Well, good. Snape was bloody hopeless at the careful and considerate act, and it was satisfying to force him into dropping the façade.

'It will be storming later tonight,' Snape managed without shouting, which chipped away some at Harry's satisfaction.

'The instrumental words being _later tonight._ '

'I will also remind you that you're making dinner this evening.'

Harry's blood boiled. He _never_ forgot dinner when it was his turn. He never forgot lunch on the rare days Snape allowed him to touch his precious non-stick pan. He no longer even forgot Snape's milk, for Christ's sake's.

'I'll be back in time to make you your bloody dinner, alright?'

Snape released him with more force than necessary, almost like he was suddenly repelled by his mere proximity. 'Fine, go,' he said darkly. 'Hopefully you'll not have forgotten how to fly, too.'

Harry barged out the door, smacked it closed behind him, cast a quick disillusionment charm, heard Snape turn the lock as he mounted his broom—and then he was off.

He'd been sure he'd start crying the moment his feet left the ground, but his eyes stayed resolutely dry. He flew over cliffs, unable to think of a single thing, only half-aware where he was going. The crags beneath him were painted with heather and young grass in patterns that seemed uncanny to him, unreal, like he was in a dream he couldn't wake up from.

He took a sharp turn and flew out onto the open sea.

Soon, the shore was a thinning line drawn in charcoal between two planes of blue, and the wind on his reddened skin was beginning to burn. He imagined all the things he could have said to Snape. Hey, did your father start drinking before or after he first saw your ugly face? Do you have any tips on how to get better at hurting anyone remotely close to you, or is that a skill you need to be born with? What does it feel like, to have killed the only two people who might have ever loved you?

Once he'd run out of scenarios, he felt sick. If Snape knew even a fraction of the abject horridness that Harry's brain came up with, he would sever all ties and likely go straight into witness protection, and Harry wouldn't blame him. If any of his friends knew of the things that went through his head, they would do the same.

He had to stop. But the more he tried to stopper the horror, the more it pushed at the edges of what little space he'd allowed it, until it spilled over uncontrollably, inescapable.

He angled his broom north. Time swept by him like the sea, dark and unmeasurable. Clasped on the handle of his broomstick, his hands were frozen still: he wasn't sure he would be able to move them if he'd tried. He couldn't have said how far out he'd flown, but the air tasted different, and the sky was overcast with brilliant clouds, the glow from their linings blinding.

If he kept going, he would eventually get to the North Pole. He wondered if he'd starve before he reached it; he had no real sense of geographic distance. Maybe it didn't matter. Surely, he'd fall from his broom from sheer exhaustion long before that.

He understood that he should be turning back by now. He just couldn't make himself _stop._

Time and space sped past him. Harry didn't think about either. He flew.

And then, in the corner of his eye, he saw it. First, a crease in the black water, building and cresting. Then, a solid mass, glistening in the setting sun, larger than anything he'd seen in his life, like a dark cloud once drowned, rising from the depths.

The whale spouted a column of water. It caught the sun in its rainbow mist.

Harry laughed breathlessly, drawn to a halt mere feet above the apparition, too surprised with the sheer wonder he felt to put words to it.

Marnie had said he would never see one in spring. Well, Marnie had another thing coming. Was it too late to go and tell her now?

He glanced at his watch and immediately felt lightheaded with panic.

His first instinct was to disbelieve. Surely it couldn't be _this_ late, he couldn't have been out _that_ long? But now that he took stock, he became aware of the fast-fading sun, the ache in his thighs and bum, the chapped lips frozen stiff on his tightly-pulled face. The world and Harry's watch were in agreement, and the night storm was brewing heady between him and the distant shore, hidden behind the thunderheads he was going to have to pierce.

It was safe to say that dinner would be late.

It was one thing, he thought to himself bitterly as he sped back the way he came, now trembling with cold, to be stupid enough to fail his Apparition exam; it was another to be so stupid as to turn full-on suicidal because of a failed Apparition exam. What had he been _thinking_? He was supposed to have left this whole mess behind. This wasn't him anymore. It should have taken a little more for him to unravel than one failing grade.

The wind rocked him in all directions. The first drops of rain pattered on his head, then ran down his back like a shiver. He thought about casting an Impermeable, but he feared that if he so much as loosened his hold on the Firebolt, he would be tossed into the depths.

Thunder growled overhead. At a particularly potent gust, Harry's hands on the wet wood slipped, and he jerked his broom off-balance as he threw himself forward to find purchase. One of his feet dipped below the surface of the rolling waters. The sea boiled with waves, coming up tall enough to lick at him, but he didn't like the idea of pulling up into clouds rumbling with unspent electricity. Shame burned in his stomach. This was all his fault, and entirely stupid, and all he wanted was to be back in Sandsend and buried under the duvet, but now he would miss dinner because he couldn't even do that one thing right.

The shore was sunk into darkness, the houses etched into one black mass. Why were none of the lights on? He had the insane thought some calamity had struck in his absence and upon his return, he would find only ruins and crumbling skeletons. He leaned forward on his broom, willing it to go faster, _faster._

When his feet reconnected with the ground, he almost didn't believe it. He felt as if he'd been gone for years.

He ran up to the porch, spelled the door open, shook off the glamour and then shook off some of the fear, when he heard the crackling of the fire and caught the glimmer of candles suspended in the air. The power must have gone off, that was all.

The sense of relief was short-lived: heady scents of meat and cranberry drifted in from the darkened kitchen, and when lightning struck, he saw in the flash dirty dishes waiting in the sink. He'd missed dinner.

'Potter!'

Snape emerged from the stairway, looking haunted in the low glow that slipped through the crack to the sitting room. Thunder roared outside and Harry felt the floor shake under his feet. It was like a scene from a gothic novel, he thought, and any minute now, Snape would bare his teeth and demand a blood sacrifice.

'Do you have any idea what time it is? What in—' he seemed to struggle with his words, throat spasming around them in odd twitches of muscle. 'I have had it with you today, Potter. I don't know where you've got the idea that you can act however you please, with no thought to how your actions impact those around you, but—'

'That's not true,' Harry whispered.

'No? Did you not tell me you would be back well in time to avoid the storm? That you would make dinner tonight?'

Harry said nothing. Snape sighed, then stepped to the side to let him through onto the stairway.

'You're dripping water on the rug. Just go.'

When Harry didn't move, he gave him a push. 'Go upstairs, Potter.'

'I don't want to,' Harry said softly. He wanted to stay in the sitting room and have something to eat and warm up in front of the fireplace, and he wanted Snape to not sound like that anymore.

'Well, I don't want to look at your face anymore. I suppose we can't always get what we want.'

Harry went upstairs.

He peeled off his clothes, dark and heavy with water. He shivered in the shower, the hot stream bruising his skin, his eyes closed against the beat of anxiety as the pipes stirred to life. He brushed his teeth, combed the salt out of his hair, then wrapped himself in a blanket and collapsed face-forward onto the bed, heart racing in his ears and legs twitching with exhaustion. This shouldn't be such a big deal, he tried to tell himself. The storm would pass. Snape would get over it. Harry would apologise, and he wouldn't fly out into the night anymore, and he'd retake the stupid exam, and stop being cruel and thoughtless, and have a big breakfast in the morning.

This time, the tears came easily.

Rain continued to sheet outside as Harry's pillow swallowed more and more wet. He might as well have been back in Privet Drive, he thought. Achy, trembling with lingering cold after getting caught out by bad weather when working in the garden. Yelled at and told he wasn't a welcome sight downstairs. Trapped in his bedroom. _Hungry_.

'Potter, how long does it take to—' the voice sounded like it was coming from another place. Harry rolled onto his back, squinting through tears to make out the outline of the figure planted in the grey rectangle of the doorway. It seemed odd to him to see Snape there. He _knew_ he was in Sandsend, not at the Dursleys – but just then, it felt wrong.

'What?' he asked wetly, then sat up and wiped at his cheeks, too tired for embarrassment.

A beat of silence. 'What's wrong?' Snape asked back.

'Nothing.' Harry watched his fingers splayed on the light sheets. They seemed off to him, too. 'I'm okay, it's just—it's been a rubbish day and the, uhm, the Dursleys used to send me to my room without food when—this isn't the same thing at all, I know, because then, well, I wouldn't eat for days sometimes and this is just one stupid meal, but it's just reminded me, that's all.'

He risked a glance up, but it was too dark to make out Snape's expression.

For a while, it was silent again. Harry shouldn't have mentioned the Dursleys. They didn't _talk_ about the Dursleys.

'Come,' Snape said finally, reaching out with a hand. 'Come on, get up.'

His body moved of its own accord, numb and malleable. He let Snape lead him down the stairs, fingers dug into his shoulder right above where he'd splinched skin, the needling pain the only thing that felt real. Lightning struck again and Harry counted in his mind until thunder followed. The storm was drawing away.

Snape halted in front of the sitting room table, where a plate with rice and a spicy-smelling stew had been set out in the penumbra of the floating candle. Harry stared at it for a moment without comprehension, then his mind caught up to the facts. He instantly felt horrible.

'I expected you to come down after you've changed,' Snape was saying from just behind him, hand still on Harry's shoulder. 'I came up to see what was taking you so long.'

'Oh,' Harry said stupidly. 'Sorry.'

Snape turned him around and pulled him close.

Harry's breath stuttered out of him. Snape's sweater was worn and scratchy against his cheek. He twisted his hands in the fabric until it rode up Snape's back, revealing the old shirt underneath. 'Breathe,' a voice in his ear reminded. 'It's alright now. Breathe.'

He tried, though with Snape squeezing the life out of him, it wasn't easy. The man held on like he was tackling a rabid animal.

'It's alright,' Snape was murmuring again. He clearly didn't have the vocabulary for this. 'It's alright.'

'Yeah,' Harry mumbled into his shoulder. 'Just stop being angry with me for a minute.'

'It's a little hard to be angry with you when you tell me I'm giving you flashbacks to your abusive childhood.'

'They're not flashbacks—'

'Less talking, more breathing.'

'I'm breathing between the words.'

Snape shushed him. He must have decided Harry wasn't a flight risk, because his arms had fractionally loosened their hold.

'Do you want to try eating now?'

The question sounded tentative, like Snape was trying hard not to suggest which was the appropriate answer. Harry's chest no longer felt like it was crushing his heart, so he could probably manage it, but his stomach was in knots. 'I'm not really hungry,' he confessed.

'You're not—for heaven's sake,' Snape said, then laughed into Harry's hair.

It was a bizarre sound, uncouth and awkward and too normal. Harry realised he might have broken Snape. All these weeks of tension and the man had finally snapped; if he had to see Lockhart every time he came to visit Snape in St. Mungo's, he would _really_ have to kill himself.

He smoothed out the fabric of Snape's sweater, then sniffed to try and avoid getting any more snot over him. A handkerchief was pushed into his face. Snape let him lean back a little to blow, but never lowered his arms.

Suddenly, Harry couldn't stand it, and not because it wasn't nice, to blow your nose half into someone's chest. He couldn't stand it because he'd needed this years ago.

He disentangled himself from the clutches, gaze kept low to hide this new emotion from Snape. He pulled the quilt off the back of the sofa and tucked it around himself as he sunk down by the fire, just like he'd wanted when he was out in the storm. The sense of peace he'd fantasised about didn't come.

Snape disappeared into the kitchen, then reappeared with a plate and a mug. It was one of the nice, top-shelf mugs. He must have been feeling guilty as hell.

'Toast,' he announced when setting them down on the coffee table.

'This is all your fault,' said Harry.

'You've made that quite clear.'

'No, I mean—I don't normally have freak-outs like that. Maybe we don't talk about it, but ever since I've told you, I can hear you constantly _thinking_ about it. And that makes _me_ think about it.'

Snape gave a nod. He'd sat down right next to where Harry had planted his feet. It felt awkwardly intentional.

'It is a challenging thing not to think about,' he said.

'Well, I was managing fine before _you_ started to think about it.'

Harry tore off a piece of toast. He deliberated whether he would sick up if he had it. 'I feel like you're feeling guilty about it and I don't want you to feel guilty.'

'It would be virtually impossible for me not to,' Snape said simply. 'So I suggest you make your peace with it.'

'Well, I think it's stupid,' Harry drew his knees closer to his chest, bracing himself. 'And it makes _me_ feel guilty that I'm making you feel guilty.'

'I hope you realise that is idiotic.'

'Yeah, but it doesn't make me _not_ feel it.'

Snape sighed. The dark stain of tears on his sweater drew attention away from his face, making it difficult for Harry to focus. 'Obviously, none of this is your fault. I will not have you taking on the responsibility for helping me sort through my own feelings on the matter.'

'It's not your fault either! I will not have _you_ taking on the responsibility for how my own family treated me—'

'That is not nearly the same thing.'

'And Dumbledore knew,' Harry bit his cheek. 'He knew I hated it there and wanted to stay in Hogwarts every summer. Remus knew that, too. Mrs Weasley sent me extra food because she knew they weren't feeding me. Mrs Figg knew—'

'And I blame all of them,' Snape hissed. 'But none of them treated you the way I treated you, either.'

Harry's stomach knotted more. There was a reason, of course, why they didn't talk about this. He set the toast aside. 'No. They didn't.'

Snape didn't look at him. Harry had some of his tea.

'Did he know about the cupboard?'

'Huh?'

'Albus.'

'Oh. I don't know.' Harry had sometimes wondered that himself, though he tried not to. 'I don't know if he knew the details.'

Snape jerked his head in a nod. His face was a grimace.

'I'm not sure which would be worse. That he knew everything, or that he didn't want to even try and find out. But it doesn't matter either way,' Harry breathed carefully around the concession. 'Because of the blood wards, he couldn't have done much anyway.'

'Blood wards,' Snape scoffed. 'He knew exactly what environment you were growing up in and he chose to let it happen, not because of the damn wards, but because it was _convenient_. If your guardians had any care for you at all, you wouldn't have been going after bloody stones and basilisks, or you'd be out of Hogwarts and off to Argentina in record time. He wouldn't have got away with training you up to be his little child soldier and he knew it.'

Harry said nothing. Snape had hit precisely where it hurt, though the man was too taken up by his own anger to notice.

'He knew no one in their right mind would approve either,' he carried on, ignorant to Harry's own pained fury. 'Merlin, the number of times I came in, raving about how arrogant and spoilt you were, and he'd use every argument under the sun to convince me otherwise, except to tell me _that_.'

'You wouldn't have believed it anyway,' Harry bit out.

'Coming from you? No. Coming from him, I would have.'

Harry's stomach seized. He leaned forward, breathing through the hurt. Snape kept his eyes on the fire, then chuckled without amusement, 'At least I got to kill him, I suppose.'

He saw then the torment on Snape's face, and his own pain and anger dissipated as if by magic. He didn't want to tear down the memory of a man Snape had cared for. In what Harry had seen in the Pensieve during the battle, it seemed as though Dumbledore had been the only person Snape had felt close to over the years, and that relationship must have been fraught on its own, without Harry now scratching at old wounds.

'It doesn't matter,' he repeated quickly. 'None of it matters, okay? He thought he was doing the right thing. Maybe he was wrong, maybe he was right. Maybe if he'd done anything differently, I wouldn't have defeated Voldemort, right? I'd say that's worth one crappy childhood.'

'You don't know what would have happened. Albus couldn't have known either and that is not a gamble he had any right to make—'

'It doesn't matter!' Harry exclaimed. 'Voldemort's dead! Dumbledore's dead! My childhood is over. I'm not getting it back, and I'd rather believe it was all for something, you know, and that Dumbledore actually cared about me—'

'I never said he didn't,' Snape interrupted him. He drew a breath, then glanced away. 'There is no doubt that he adored you. I despised you all the more for it, so I should know. But loving someone and hurting them aren't mutually exclusive, Harry.'

Harry thought about Teddy.

'Yeah,' he said quietly.

'I understand it might be—helpful—to frame this as a meaningful experience. I will not stop you. But I cannot agree with that view.'

Harry nodded lamely. 'Okay.'

'I don't know what to do with this,' Snape confessed after a beat of quiet. 'I don't know what to do to make this better.'

'There's nothing you can do,' Harry said, because it was true. 'It's too late. I needed someone to do something years ago. Window's gone.'

Snape watched him for a flicker before nodding. Harry felt at once like a weight had shifted off his chest, and like another had pulled at his neck: he wanted to do something to make this better, too, for Snape, only he had no idea how.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered. Snape smiled drily.

'Have your toast,' he instructed, his voice coming out strained, and higher than usual.

Harry had his toast and the rest of his tea. Then, Snape accio'd him a vial of Pepper-Up Potion, which made Harry feel even warmer and fuzzier than he'd been already. He buried himself deeper into the quilt, nudging a foot against Snape's thigh in what he hoped would be understood as another apology.

'I'm not moving,' he told him. 'I'm just going to sleep here.'

'You'll be sore in the morning.'

'I'm already sore from flying through a bloody storm,' he argued. His eyes had drifted shut. He was worn out in every possible way, and though he didn't think they had resolved a single issue, really, he felt exactly the kind of peace that would send him into a fast and heavy sleep.

He heard Snape move around the room: the clatter of plates, the sizzle of embers in the fireplace as the flames were extinguished, the shuffle of slippers. The darkness beneath his eyelids deepened with every candle spelled away.

'D'you know I saw a whale?' he asked the darkness.

'You did?'

'Hmm.'

'Perhaps next time you might consider hunting down sea mammals during better weather. It wouldn't knock quite as many years off my life.'

''Kay,' he agreed.

He thought about saying goodnight, too, but sleep swallowed him before he got it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm rather fond of this chapter, so I hope you've enjoyed it too.  
> Thank you to everyone who've left kudos on the fic this past week. They always make me smile.  
> It's Snape's POV on Sunday!


	12. May 2nd, 1999

**May 2nd, 1999.** **  
**

'Everything seems to be in order,' the healer stated cheerily, as if this was a thing to rejoice over. As if Severus had not just given her a long list of symptoms she had failed to adequately diagnose.

As she noted his displeasure, she lost some steam. She was experienced enough not to quiver under the glare of an obstinate patient; clearly whatever she was about to say, he wouldn't like.

'Well?' he pressed. His appointment had been delayed by half an hour, which meant he'd already been away from home longer than he'd intended, and it was making him swallow bile.

'It isn't impossible that you should periodically experience some weakness or discomfort,' her wand tapped against his file. The sound was unbelievably grating. 'But I see no physical reason for violent tremors, headaches or breathing difficulties. I would ideally refer you to a Mind Healer for further treatment.'

'Your diagnosis is that it is all in my head,' he said with acid. His heart thundered. He couldn't decide whether to be relieved or embarrassed.

'That is hardly what I said. But yes, I do think that the mild symptoms you may be experiencing due to lingering nerve damage are triggering more serious psychosomatic—'

He waved her off. He used big words to express small ideas often enough to tell bullshit when he heard it.

She smiled. 'You've come in worried that your condition is deteriorating. This is good news.'

'I am overjoyed.'

Severus slunk down the examination bed and righted his coats. He'd dressed in wizarding clothes for the first time in months, desperate for any added layer to shield him from the misery of St. Mungo's, and they chafed when he walked, ill-fitting and awkward. The moment he got back, he was putting them through the wash and dumping them back into the corner of the closet, to best contain the stench of death.

It permeated the room, that smell, even though he was fairly confident no one had ever died in it. All in his head.

What would he tell Potter? They needed at least one mentally stable person in the house. Severus had lived with his trauma long enough to accept his fate, but the boy took everything entirely too seriously.

The healer scribbled something on a piece of parchment, then slid it across the table. 'The referral,' she said, with a laugh in her voice. 'There is no expiration date. Use it whenever you're ready.'

Severus planned on dying before that happened, but he pocketed the slip to humour her.

She had busied herself with note-taking when he opened the door to leave, and thus gave him no easy opening for that one last query: he'd meant to mention it, then he had decided against it, and now that she'd deemed him short of a marble, she would necessarily assume he was relating a new symptom of his own even if he told her he was asking for someone else. He dallied by the door in shameful awkwardness, and once he'd accepted that the question wouldn't leave his throat, the 'good day' came out garbled and awful.

This was likely beyond her field of expertise. He should have bloody asked anyway. But he was still raw from her words, and too much fear rested on the issue, and he knew perfectly well most of it was unfounded, and—Damn Potter and damn his Apparition test. Clearly, Severus was already going insane without having to worry over the boy's mental health affecting his magic.

He stalked down the corridor, wanting to go home and knowing he wasn't ready to go home. At the stairway, he stopped and leaned on the railing to catch the breath rushed out of him, the lingering realisations a burn on his skin. Wizards and witches grumbled their way past him, bleeding and oozing and impatient. What should he tell Potter when he inevitably stuck his nose into his business? The truth? After all, this was certainly better news than that his nervous system was traipsing toward total failure.

He tried to imagine telling him. He'd never been much of a fantasist; it was entirely beyond him.

When he saw Draco Malfoy pressing his way through the flood of discontent, he thought at first he'd imagined him, too, but then their eyes met. Severus didn't need to reach far to see the weariness beneath the surprise; there was little in the boy's mind except. Either he'd grown so apathetic as to forget what threat looked like, or he truly had a legitimate reason to be here.

'Draco,' he said, torn between interpretations.

'Severus,' Draco said coldly.

There was option three, he supposed: some childish naiveté might have taken hold and driven him to believe their old acquaintance would shield him from scrutiny. It would have been disappointing if true; for whatever awards he might have received, Severus's standing with the Ministry was not one to allow collusion with a Malfoy.

'And what might you be doing here?' he asked.

The boy's smile was canted. Perhaps not naiveté, then. 'Don't worry, Severus. My visit is entirely Ministry-sanctioned.'

Severus caught his eye and detected no deception.

'Do you mind?' He looked away sharply. Severus felt no remorse. He had to wrestle with the impulse to Leglimise Potter on a daily basis, knowing the brat would kick up a fuss if ever dared it; compared to the row that would have followed such a slip, Draco's displeasure barely registered, and would not stop him from indulging.

'I hope you are doing better now,' he offered instead, pointedly not asking for details; he had no real concern for Draco's privacy, but it was an easy enough front to put up.

Draco huffed, not buying it. Severus should never have expected naiveté.

'I hope you are doing better as well,' he intoned. 'Though with the Chosen One himself as your nurse, I can only imagine the prognosis is stellar.'

Severus swallowed around the feeling and tucked it away for later, though without any real notion of what to do with it. He could no longer use it to fuel any anger at Potter; the last time he'd been angry with him, the idiot regressed far enough to believe he was going to be starved next, and that was a memory Severus had resolutely added to his nightmare repertoire for the next decade.

'How _is_ Potter?' Draco drawled, enjoying his silence.

'He is well,' Severus lied. 'How is your mother?'

'She is well.' His hair spilled over his forehead as he leaned over the balustrade in a mirror image of Severus; the strands were glued together, like they'd been treated to too many grooming spells and not enough shampoo. 'You've not heard anything about Goyle's father, I imagine.'

Severus cast a quick Muffliato.

'No,' he said, which was the truth. He'd been staying away from the Order gossip mill, trusting he would be approached with any news relating to Potter's safety, and Goyle's name had not come up.

'I suppose if you've not, then that means he's not being an idiot,' Draco sighed. 'I've told Greg about a rumoured sighting on the continent, but Merlin knows that's a lie. He's frantic about the whole thing.'

'It seems the Order has little interest in him at the moment,' Severus said carefully, thinking, 'and he is much too small a fish for the Ministry to pool resources toward a manhunt. As long as he continues to keep a low profile, I would say he is unlikely to be recaptured any time soon.'

Draco nodded. 'I'll tell him you said that. For some reason, he is convinced you would know what you're talking about.'

'You seem to think the same, seeing as you're asking for my counsel.'

'No one else to ask,' he gave him that smile again, a receptacle for some unvoiced fury. 'Greg's swallowed poison he'd stolen from Magical Accidents just the other day. They use it to kill off tissue before amputating. Thank Merlin you've taught him bull in Potions, or he might have known the correct dosage. And so, desperation—' he pointed at his own chest; then, with the utmost theatrics, at Severus's, '—strange bed fellows.'

'I didn't realise he was still in St. Mungo's,' Severus said, though what he thought was, _how many poisons left unwarded in the Sandsend laboratory, how many deadly, how many fast-acting, had he been in a good mood this morning?_

'They hit him with some nonsense curse combination,' Draco's fingers rapped on the railing. 'He's still not walking right, though at this point—it would be best for everyone if he got his sentence over with. It's a measly three years, but they won't send him until he's well, and he won't get well until they've sent him. As it stands now, I'd venture he's doing this to himself, but I can't very well order him to just _stop_ , can I?'

'I was not aware Mr Goyle and yourself were quite so close.'

'Neither was I,' Draco said, 'until everyone else I was close with was murdered or sent to Azkaban.'

'Potter tells me otherwise.'

'Yes, well, Hermione Granger is many things, but she isn't a Death Eater. She has never been a Death Eater. There exists an area where our experiences will never overlap.'

He cast Severus a look, like maybe despite his bitterness, he hoped for an inkling of connection where each of their experiences diverged from Miss Granger's. Severus found some solace in excavating that little bit of naiveté.

'You are not a Death Eater,' he told him. 'Not in the way I am. You have never been a Death Eater in the ways I have, and I would ask you not to suggest otherwise. I find it offensive, and I am unwilling and unable to offer any understanding that exceeds what your Gryffindor can provide.'

A childish scowl of hurt answered. 'Fine,' he spat. 'Be that way.'

Severus caught the smile before it twitched his lip. 'Good day, Draco.'

He pushed himself off the railing.

'Wait.'

Severus arched an eyebrow, torn between impatience and intrigue: Draco wasn't one to repeat a plea when refused.

A sigh. 'I wondered if you were still trialling that potion.'

'I assume you are referring to the brew that might remove the Dark Mark?'

' _Obviously_.'

'With no one to trial it _on_ , the branch of research has decayed, though not beyond repair.'

Draco had the decency not to ask why Severus hadn't trialled it on himself, though he threw him a pointed look to that end. 'Well, you may trial it on me if you like. I am free most weekends.'

This time, Severus allowed himself the smile. 'Would the appointment include shouting derogatory comments at Mr Potter and myself, or is that not on the agenda?'

Draco huffed importantly. 'Not at the moment, no.'

'Then you have my interest. Would this Saturday suit?'

Draco thought about it. 'Sunday's better,' he decided. 'Hermione's off being interviewed and then she's visiting with family on Saturday. I assume Potter might like to see her if he is to travel all that way.'

'Mr Potter and I appreciate the consideration.'

'Yes, well, thank you for being so _graceful_ about it,' Draco hissed, blood seeping through some of the paleness around his throat. 'Owl me the details, will you?' he added, then strutted away, stiff-backed and proud. If he was to continue surrounding himself with teenagers, Severus should like to find some that were a tad less demanding.

When he went home, he thudded right past the living room and upstairs, where he stripped and then washed his hands in burning heat for a solid three minutes. The skin on his neck where the healer had touched, he scrubbed raw, until it occurred to him drawing blood would only contribute to his status as a nutcase.

For once, Potter wasn't the first thing to announce its presence when he returned downstairs. It was his wake that drew the eye: the pigsty had been Severus's coffee table just this morning. Now, you could barely make it out from underneath the snotty tissues, used mugs growing mould, plates with cold food and torn scraps of parchment and books covered in cornflakes and breadcrumbs – and the owl, for Christ's sake's, sitting amidst the feast, beak-deep into a half-eaten egg.

A hand appeared from behind the back of the sofa. 'Hi,' it waved.

Severus swallowed around half a dozen comments, all entirely called for. He circled the sofa and eased the flaccid egg white out of the animal's hold. Not for the first time, he considered taking an interest in taxidermy.

Princess Potter peered up from his place atop ten thousand pillows, looking as pathetically miserable as he could manage it, even though it was _Severus_ who'd just returned from a hospital visit for a potentially debilitating condition.

'How was it?' His nose gave a repulsive whistle when he breathed.

'Fine,' Severus said, like a bloody coward. 'Move.'

Potter sat up with an entirely fake wince and shuffled deeper into his pillow nest. He'd caught a rather mild case of the sniffles during his ridiculous dash into a hurricane, and he'd been milking it in a way that cut a little close for comfort to Severus's fondest memories of James Potter. But he hadn't retreated into his room the way he often did when his mood dipped, and Severus had fully expected to spend days coaxing him out after their fight that night. Instead, he'd trotted downstairs the following morning, trailing blankets, announced himself in the throes of consumption, and thrown his dead weight on the sofa. He hadn't moved since.

Severus had to assume this was better, though he had no real frame in which to understand the new pathology.

He shoved the blankets over Potter's knees to best avoid touching them, driven by the sense that he'd carried in some impurity from the ward despite the clothing change. He glared at the mess. 'Do you plan on washing any of those, or are you breeding cockroaches? You'll need to give me your rates if you are.'

'I'm sick. You can't bully me about cleaning when I'm sick.'

'Oh, and how convenient that is for you, this crippling illness of yours.'

'I'm not making it up!'

Severus tensed in surprise. 'Do not _yell_.'

'I _will_ yell if you come in here and immediately accuse me of, what, pretending to be ill for attention or—something—'

That was precisely what Severus believed was happening, but he recognised saying so would be unhelpful.

'I said no such thing,' he told him instead, 'and I would appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth.'

'Don't yell at me!'

'I'm not yelling at you—'

'Yes, you are!'

'You're the only one yelling,' Severus said, which was almost entirely accurate. 'And I'm not accusing you of pretending, though if you were so desperate for attention that you'd fake an illness, then clearly you would have sorely required it. Now, which of those are you still eating?'

With a groan, Potter pushed himself up to reach for the nearest plate. 'No, sit down,' Severus lifted a hand to stop him, then felt awkward about touching him. 'You want to be ill, you're going to stay put.'

'I don't _want_ to be ill!'

'Then stop.'

The boy burrowed his head in his elbow. 'I really _do_ feel ill,' he murmured sulkily.

'Yes, well, if you rest and avoid storms for a few days, you will no longer.' He pulled at the corner of the blanket to cover the bare feet peeking out, because he'd clearly been born with a natural disposition toward being bullied by Potters. 'Would you allow me to put the whole of the feast in the bin, or are you going to pitch a fit about wasting mouldy toast?'

Potter shrugged. 'Just leave it for Artemis to finish.'

The gods must have looked favourably on Severus for not having strangled the boy so far, because he had not thought himself possessed of the strength to say, 'Fine,' and yet he did.

It was silent for an uncomfortable moment. Maybe Severus shouldn't tell him that he'd been making up an illness, too: the boy knew entirely too much about him already. Then again, perhaps honesty would make him more willing to divulge if he experienced another lapse in magic, and if that turned out to be Severus blowing things out of proportion, then at least he might feel better about his general hysteria.

The silence was interrupted by rhythmic crunching. Potter had snatched up the bowl of cornflakes. Severus hated how familiar the sound felt.

'I'm a bit weird about food, I guess,' he said out of the blue. 'Probably because when I lived with the Dursleys, I had to try and sneak out all kinds of leftovers. I had a loose floorboard in my bedroom where I put, like, the yoghurt Dudley didn't want any more or overripe bananas. Never cornflakes, though. You can only do soft foods, because the crunchy ones make too much noise and you might get caught.'

This was all delivered in an entirely conversational tone. Severus tried not to imagine a younger Harry muffling the sounds of chewing in the dead of night. Maybe he shouldn't tell him. After all, one question would lead to the next, and then it would come out that Severus's made-up symptoms had worsened considerably since he'd found out about the abuse, and then the stupid brat would blame himself for his mental collapse.

It had been torture not to talk about it and keep guessing, but he wasn't so sure he preferred this new openness.

'Well.' He cleared his throat. He should touch the boy's shoulder or something. His knee? What was the appropriate touch in the circumstances, how much and how long? He wanted it to feel natural. He didn't want Potter to flinch away or think he was being odd. 'That would explain it.'

He didn't touch him.

'You want some?' the boy angled the bowl toward him, then chuckled as if nothing at all was wrong. The little sadist.

'Get that away from my face. You should have some real food. What do you want for lunch?'

'Uh, fish and chips?'

Severus bit down on a comment about how salt and grease were not conducive to convalescence. Potter wasn't _actually_ ill, so it hardly mattered; and he was fairly certain eighteen was too old to grow spoiled. 'Fine.'

'Look, it might be my last meal for all we know.'

'I said _fine,_ didn't I?'

'We don't have to have it though, if you don't want it.'

Severus decided to put an end to the conversation by leaving.

'Where are you going?' Potter whined. 'No, stay, I need to show you something.'

The something in question was a crumpled piece of parchment, which upon closer inspection turned out to be an old Potions essay. The boy's mental decay must have begun young, if he'd thought this a memento worth preserving.

'Were you in a bad mood when you were grading it or something?' he was looking over Severus's shoulder, chin close enough to his rotator that he tensed, afraid he was going to knock into him by accident. ' _Constricted by the school marking system, I am forced to settle on a Troll, though this plagiaristic blabber reads as if it had been produced by someone with half the brain._ Do you really take the time to think these up for every essay, or just mine?'

Severus had no memory of the comment or the essay, but he recognized the material: it had been written in Harry's second year at Hogwarts. The large handwriting pooled together toward the end of each line, slipping off-angle and curling into the next row.

'Oh, I remember this, actually! Yeah, I had to ask Hermione what _plagiaristic_ meant—wait, what's that I wrote here? That makes no sense—God, did I really sound that stupid?'

He wanted to get to his feet, to escape, but Potter's chin and teeth and mercilessly flapping tongue were in the way. 'Don't be ridiculous,' he managed through a wave of nausea. His hands started shaking, but there was no blaming it on nerve damage anymore. 'You did not sound stupid, you sounded like a twelve-year-old.'

'And twelve-year-olds all have half the brains of a troll?' he laughed. 'Is that individually or collectively?'

A thing in Severus's chest twisted, then snapped. He was perhaps going to be sick. He was perhaps going to die of shame. A twelve-year-old. He tried to remember the way he looked back then, though it felt strange to visualise. The glasses had been larger on his face, he thought. He hadn't reached Severus's shoulder yet.

And Harry was right: he should have done something _then_. He reached way past Severus's shoulder now, and he would never get any of this childhood back no matter how many bowls of cornflakes he inhaled.

'Collectively. Could you—could—put it away, for now.'

'Sure.' The weight behind Severus's back shifted. 'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine.'

'Did—uhm, I know you'll tell me it's none of my business but, did they say anything? You know, at—at St. Mungo's?' He breathed, then breathed again. Severus tried to copy it, until he realised he wasn't panicking anymore, he was only sad. 'I'd really like to know.'

Severus shut his eyes. 'Everything is alright,' he said. 'In a few months, I should see some improvement.'

'What, but they gave you something for it, or—?' Severus shook his head. 'No? So what, it's just going to get better on its own over time?'

'Yes,' he said, and decided in that moment he was telling the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I've had no time at all this weekend to reply to reviews, but should be able to do so tonight :)
> 
> We're almost at the end now... the final chapter is coming on Thursday, and it's a long one!


	13. May 5th, 1999

**May 5th, 1999.**

_Harry, are you at Hogwarts yet?_

The warmth of the coin in his hand. Oh, the warmth of it.

_We're slowly freezing to death by the lake, yeah,_ he spelled back. _Draco was meant to meet us here._

They'd been waiting nearly an hour now. At first, they skipped stones on the calm water and did not mind; but then, the air grew humid and biting and time ground to a standstill, and Snape scoffed when Harry reminded him he was still recuperating and might develop laryngitis, so now Harry wasn't talking to him anymore.

_I'm at Hogwarts, too!_ Ron's large scrawl spanned the coin's diameter. _Was doing business in Hogsmeade and now I'm here. Don't ask won't tell. It's a surprise._

_I'm on my way back now,_ Hermione wrote. _Can't you wait at Hagrid's?_

'Hermione says we should go wait at Hagrid's,' he told Snape. 'Sounds very reasonable. Oh, wait, who else said we should go do that half an hour ago? I remember someone saying something like that, don't you?'

'I think you must be confused,' Snape said. 'It is only the two of us here, I said no such thing, and it couldn't have been you since you have laryngitis.'

'Not _yet_ I don't.'

'Don't try and speak, you'll only make it worse.'

Harry wasn't all that cold, really, but he wasn't as comfortable as he might have been, ensconced in one of Hagrid's armchair by the fire, and he did not see why he should be denied it just because Snape was socially awkward. He toyed with telling him something like, _Hagrid's really nice, you know,_ or _I'll do all the talking if you like_ , but putting Snape on the defensive about this particular flaw was a sure road to disaster, and this day was stressful enough without an unnecessary row in it.

'Where do you think he is?' Harry whined instead, shifting from foot-to-foot. He sounded childish, but _that_ was a sure road, he'd discovered, to softening Snape until he gave him what he wanted. 'We've been here for ages now. I can't even remember my life from before we got here.'

Snape threw him a dark look to cover up that Harry's strategy was working. 'Go to Hagrid's, then,' he said. 'I'll wait here for Mr Malfoy.'

'No, I'm not leaving you here to die alone. We can both go to Hagrid's—'

'You're the one with the laryngitis, I am perfectly comfortable here.'

' _That_ 's a stone-faced lie,' Harry thrust a finger into his face, to indicate the seat of the stone-facedness. 'I could have stayed in bed another hour. Think about that.'

'A sacrifice worthy of the Chosen One,' Snape mocked. There was an edge to his voice: he was nervous too, Harry thought.

He'd spoken with McGonagall last week and got permission to enter the castle. The last time they'd both been in said castle, they were on two opposite sides of the battle trenches, and before that, they'd been sworn enemies for years. Well. Snape had been Harry's sworn enemy, Harry had probably been more of a sworn annoyance.

Maybe it was stupid, but Harry couldn't help but worry they would fall back into old patterns the moment they entered those walls again. Hogwarts was a reality all on its own, a world with laws and customs where teachers were addressed per _sir_ and kept at a safe distance to ensure they wouldn't discover Harry's tactics for skiving off homework; where Harry and Snape hated each other; where clear lines divided up the school population into friends and enemies.

It was where Harry, Ron and Hermione were a world onto themselves. That part, Harry was excited for.

A drop of rain struck the very tip of his head. The corresponding shiver made him hiss.

He pulled out his wand to spell a protective shield over their heads, but hesitated when Snape flinched. Why would he flinch? He imagined striking him with a hex now. Something brutal and painful; _Sectumsempra_ , maybe, for dramatic irony. Snape's wand was buried in his coat, he would never be able to pull it out in time. And now Snape was watching him like a hawk, eyes narrowed in expectation—what if he could see what Harry had been thinking?

Burning with sour shame, Harry pulled up his Occlumency wards and spelled the shield on. Snape relaxed visibly to his side.

'A very stable shield,' he said at Harry's questioning look.

'Uh, thanks? It's like, a fifth-year spell.'

'We don't teach shields like this until sixth year.'

'You don't have to look so surprised, you know, I'm not completely stupid. First you don't let me Apparate on my own, and now what, you're shocked I can cast a NEWT-level spell—'

Snape turned away pointedly. Harry thought about leaving him here in the rain: if Snape wanted to be cold and miserable, who was he to stop him?

'This is a preposterous show of disrespect,' Snape decided, and Harry was about to wholeheartedly agree, until he realised Snape was unlikely to be talking about himself. 'Fifteen more minutes and we're going home, and then trust me when I say I am never accepting another one of Draco Malfoy's invitations.'

Harry felt a swell of sympathetic offense. 'Alright, you don't know why he's late. Maybe something's genuinely happened that he can't—'

'He probably can't be bothered to get out of bed in this weather. Or maybe he has laryngitis, too.'

'It's not my fault he's late, is it? So what's the need for dragging me into it?' with a snag of the wand, Harry removed his shield from over Snape's head. 'And if you're going to stand here assuming the worst of everyone, then you can do it alone. I'm going to Hagrid's.'

He stomped off, feeling like he'd overreacted and not really understanding why. He didn't look back until after he'd taken off his coat and dropped it over the back of a chair, and hugged Hagrid and said he _would_ fancy some tea, thank you very much—Snape's forlorn figure, distorted through the windowpane, seemed to communicate to the world that Harry was an arsehole.

'Alright, Harry?'

'Yeah,' Harry said. 'Just feeling nervous about being back here, I think.'

'Ah, nervous? Why would ya be nervous, Harry? It's just same ol' Hogwarts, that is. You're right back home.'

Harry felt a stir of warmth at the word. _Home_. The wet air smelled of it, as did Hagrid's spiced tea.

'Same old,' he agreed. 'Only we're all different now.'

The knock on the door came just as Harry was finishing his last sip of tea. Hermione and Snape stood on the other side, looking unlikely.

'I was walking in from Hogsmeade and ran into Professor Snape,' Hermione explained. 'Shall we all just go into the castle and try to find Draco?'

'Sure,' Harry said, swallowing around the spike of anxiety. 'What's up with Ron? Why is he here, do you know?'

'No idea, he refuses to say—I guess we'll see.' She grinned then, leaning close even as her voice held its volume, 'It's coming out tomorrow, Harry! The article! Can you believe it? And Rita says we'll be making first page!'

'Congrats,' he smiled, meaning it. 'I'll pop out to Diagon Alley first thing to get my copy.'

'We get the Prophet by owl every morning, Potter,' Snape said. It was clear from his voice he hadn't appreciated being left alone by the lake after all.

'Yeah, but that's _your_ Prophet. I want my own copy.'

It drizzled on their way to the castle, and Harry had to take his glasses off twice to wipe them dry. His stomach had been transfigured into an anvil. His thoughts ran out ahead of him, bringing back horrid images of things he felt pretty confident would never happen.

He pressed his shoulder against the front door next to Hermione's, and pushed.

Inside was same old Hogwarts, except that it was nothing like it.

A gaggle of students ran past, cloaks and ties fluttered into a blur. Hollers and laughter came from the open door to the Main Hall, where students sat on top of tables, sharing sweets and throwing wrappers and pushing one another off—The Headless Nick was attempting to convince some Gryffindors to remove their shoes at least, but he wasn't having much success.

'What's going on?' Hermione looked wildly from one table to the next. 'It's lunchtime, where is the food? Where are the teachers? Thompson, stop pushing him, do you want to crack his skull open? Wright—'

'You could help her, you know,' Harry suggested. 'Most of them still remember you.'

'Alas, most of them are no longer my problem,' said Snape with a disgusting smile.

Just then, from the stairs leading up to the first floor came Draco, hair tossed wildly and collar wrenched open around a reddened throat.

'Oh, there you are,' he said.

'There we—we've waited by the lake for two hours,' Snape spat. A nearby Hufflepuff dropped off the table and sat straight-backed on the bench, throwing Snape a cautious glance. 'Do you really think Mr Potter and I have nothing better to be doing with our time—'

'You were out by the lake all this time? You should have just come inside,' Draco looked perplexed. 'Anyway, look, I'm not sure I'll have the time to do the trial today, anyway—'

Harry stepped in front of Snape to avert tragedy.

'Draco!' Hermione erupted from inside the Great Hall. 'What in Merlin's name is going on?'

'Ah, well,' he scratched at his neck, avoiding anyone's eye. 'Shall we go find somewhere a little quieter?'

They followed him down the corridor. Sounds from the hall echoed against the walls, then faded into the space between them. Just off the corner to the staff room, they pressed themselves into a window nook, where Hermione helped herself to Harry's shoulder to propel herself onto the sill.

'So,' Draco cleared his throat. 'After, uhm, well.'

He was silent for a beat.

'After you left to see Skeeter, I thought—I don't know, it just occurred to me that perhaps it might be worth it to let the elves in the kitchen know about what you've found, before The Prophet published it. They became—upset—about their, you know, the Hogwarts elves that were made redundant, living off Potter's charity and all—they don't like that, charity, do they? And they were talking about things that could be done, and, well, I didn't mean—I told them that all of the school board have children or relatives in Hogwarts, so they can obviously be—anyway, I didn't mean for them to go on bloody strike, did I? I was only equipping them with information—'

'The Hogwarts elves went on _strike_?' Hermione repeated, eyes dangerously bright.

'They've barricaded themselves in the kitchen,' Draco sighed, rubbing a hand over his face so hard, it left red marks. 'They refuse to clean, they refuse to cook, they refuse to even make any of the food available—'

'Hagrid's not said anything about it,' Harry noticed.

'Yes, well, it's only been going on since last night. He doesn't always come in for meals over the weekends, does he?'

Two Ravenclaws and three Gryffindors, thin and gangly, jogged up to the staff room door and began chanting, fists in the air, 'We want food! We want food!' The moment the door screeched open, they broke into a sprint back down the corridor, breathless with laughter.

'Oh, Professor McGonagall,' Hermione said weakly. 'Hello.'

McGonagall sent her a glare that would have made a statue weak in the knees. 'Miss Granger,' she enunciated clearly. 'Mr Potter, Mr Malfoy. Severus, it is a pleasure to see you.'

She very clearly did not intend this as a collective _you._ Harry wanted to argue that _he_ hadn't done anything and should not be held accountable by association.

'The sentiment is returned,' Snape said stiffly, because he couldn't just be normal about this. 'I am glad to see the school prosper even in my absence.'

Harry fought the impulse to jab an elbow into his ribs.

McGonagall's lip quirked. 'Yes, it has been a fruitful term. We've had some students achieve great success in journalism—' Hermione coloured, '—and, apparently, anarchy. I wish I could dally, but I must go meet Aberforth, he's arrived with a lunch supply.'

'You should find someone else in Hogsmeade, you know,' said Harry. 'Aberforth's food isn't—the best.'

'We've sent most of the students to Hogsmeade for the day, Mr Potter,' McGonagall was unimpressed. 'The vendors prefer to stay where they are and let the customers come to them, and few wish to take on the challenge of feeding an entire school only to inevitably fail.'

'I'm not sure Mr Dumbledore can feed the whole school, Professor—'

'No, Miss Granger,' McGonagall agreed. 'But neither does he mind failing. Please feel free to use the staff room for your potion trial if you wish. Now, if you'll excuse me.'

The moment she was out of earshot, Hermione shoved an elbow in Draco's side. Unlike the elbow shove Harry had considered for Snape, this one was apparently meant as a gesture of friendship.

'Draco, this is brilliant! Not even a day, and the school's devolved into chaos—'

'No,' Draco pushed her off. 'No, don't say it like you're congratulating me, I want nothing to do with this—I am not involved. Does anyone happen to have a Calming Draught on them, by chance?'

Snape produced a vial from the inside pocket of his coat, which Draco intercepted and chugged down, throat bobbing frantically as he drank without breath.

Harry narrowed his eyes at Snape. 'You just carry that around? Any particular reason why?'

'No reason,' Snape had the decency to not look him in the eye. 'Well, I think I have seen enough. The Golden Trio have clearly left behind a power vacuum and the Disastrous Duo struck at the opportunity—a fascinating case of repeating history, but I believe I would rather return home for lunch.'

'What? No!' Harry rounded on him. 'Look, we've still got to find Ron, and we've just got here—'

'Feel free to search the pandemonium. I will see you should you ever manage to return.'

'Oh, come on—'

'I know where you can get food if you're hungry,' Draco spoke up suddenly. His eyes on Harry felt odd; they made him realise he had heard and thought of him often over the past year, but hardly ever seen him. 'And I know where to find Weasley.'

'Yes, please stay, Professor,' Hermione implored. 'I feel horrible for dragging you all the way out here for no reason.'

'Mr Malfoy dragged me all the way out here, not you, Miss Granger,' Snape said, then sighed. 'Fine. I will sample more of the disaster until we've found Mr Weasley, but then I'm leaving.'

'And after food,' Harry reminded. 'Where are we going, then?'

He had forgotten the reality of Hogwarts, too, and like Draco, it was both what he'd imagined it would be and completely other. Litter sat in some corridors, trailing behind children that were so much smaller, surely, than he had ever been; hollers, music and laughter sounded in classrooms, their doors thrown open; on the first floor, the ruins preserved as a memorial from last year's battle were set about by younger students, picnicking on the wounded stone. A little boy had his feet propped up on the cracked head of a statue, and he was blowing gum: the bubbles floated up and up until they tore open against the high ceiling.

'They shouldn't sit on there,' Harry said, suddenly hard of breath. 'That's so disrespectful.'

'Yes, it is,' Snape said happily. 'Would you like to tell them so? Oh, please do. Do you suppose they will care, or turn around and do the very same thing again the moment you've looked away?'

'I think it's inspirational, actually,' Hermione said.

They turned the corner. On that wall right there, Ginny had once written in blood that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, and hisses in the pipes had led Harry by the hand to scene after scene of terror. Now, that wall was blank, but on the one opposite, Peeves was putting the finishing touches on his own tribute to anarchy: a large purple slogan that spelled, _Viva La R_ _ **ELF**_ _olución!_

'Is that supposed to be funny?' Draco remarked drily.

'I don't know,' Harry said without thinking. 'I don't speak Spanish.'

Draco snorted. It made Harry smile, this whole thing, until Draco drew a door open and led them into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

His heart was in his left ear. His lungs had left his body. He was a vessel filled with nothing but a dreadful, swollen _anticipation_ , even as he knew the thing he waited for would never come.

' _Open_ ,' Draco hissed, face set in concentration. The word looked wrong on his lips, and something in Harry wanted instantly to repeat it just so it would come out right.

The sink dropped before their eyes. Hermione and Snape drew back, tense and expectant.

Harry wished Snape hadn't given Draco that Calming Draught.

'Why are we going to the Chamber of Secrets?' Hermione asked evenly.

'You wanted food and you wanted Weasley, didn't you?'

'You have to realise that explains nothing.'

'You'll see,' he said mysteriously. Then, realising perhaps they were unlikely to jump into the sewage with him on faith alone, he explained, 'Some people have turned industrious since yesterday. Restaurants, I suppose you could call them, they've been cropping up all over. Not many people know the password to this one, obviously.'

Everything in Harry begged him to turn around and run and possibly skip the country, but he couldn't come off a coward in front of Draco Malfoy. So, after Hermione's body disappeared into the black cavern along with her thin yelp, he went in, too.

The ride down was a scream, nested in his throat and burning like stomach acid. When his feet finally met the ground again, they no longer felt like his feet at all, but two foreign bodies grown out of him like cancer.

His dream, re-lived and real, thrummed in his head. He didn't want to die in the Chamber of Secrets again. He knew he wouldn't, but he saw it still, over and over, in full colour.

Hermione and Draco walked on ahead, their voices echoing wetly in the tunnel. She was telling him about that time in second year when they'd believed Draco the Heir of Slytherin. He was being indignant, 'Sleeping Draught? Sleeping Draught? We thought Crabbe and Goyle had amnesia! We thought they had a brain tumour!'

'What, a brain tumour each?'

'Well, I don't know!'

Their laugher, discordant and loud, pealed through the tunnels, forward and backward and all over, until it budged at the fear in Harry, tilting it off-axis.

Where the tunnel had once erupted over Harry and Ron's heads, they helped each other over boulders and crumbling rock. Snape's grasp on Harry's shoulder, when he reached to steady him after the final drop, was a claw of tension. His face was a taut mask, greenish in the tinted light diluted through the lake and the tonnes of wet stone overhead.

'This is where Lockhart tried to _Obliviate_ Ron and I,' Harry explained. 'But he used Ron's wonky wand, it backfired, and then it took the ceiling down. I got trapped on this side.'

'Splendid,' said Snape. He hadn't released Harry's arm.

'Look, that's the Basilisk's skin,' he indicated with a pointed foot. 'It must have shed this one a really long time ago, though, it was much bigger when I saw it. Or maybe I was just smaller and it seemed that way, I don't know.'

Silence was his only response. It was as though the more scared Snape was, the less scared _Harry_ felt: as if there were a set amount of fear in Harry's body, not the infinite sprawling growth that he'd thought it, and all of it was easily redistributable.

'Why don't you use Phoenix tears for your potion, actually? Because I've not even got a scar, here,' he indicated his arm, 'where the fang came in, and it went in _deep_.'

'Phoenixes are incredibly difficult to come by, and their tears need to be fresh.'

'Oh, right. I think that was the first time when I was genuinely convinced I was going to die,' Harry mused lightly. 'I would have for sure if Fawkes hadn't shown.'

Snape's hand pressed around his shoulder so hard, he was sure it had stopped circulation.

'Ow,' he complained, rather delighted with all this. 'Stop abusing me.'

Snape pulled at a strand of Harry's hair close to the nape, making him tense in what was genuine pain, this time. ' _Ow,_ ' he repeated.

'Grow a new sense of humour, and quickly,' Snape advised him, 'or I will show you abuse.'

Harry snorted, then quickly took a jump forward, out of reach of Snape's hair-pulling hands.

The Basilisk's body was where he'd left it, dead centre of the luminous hall. Green lights, bulbous and warm to the touch, covered the walls like threads of hidden gold in a mine, and they reflected gently off the wet floor. On one side of the corpse, tables had been set up and covered in white, frilly sheets and fresh food on gilded plates; Neville was there, and Luna and Dean and Hannah Abbott, and that one girl from Ravenclaw Harry could never remember the name of. At the sight of Harry, some of them waved and called out. Others looked surreptitiously between one another as they double-checked: is that really him?

Before he had the time to feel awkward, Ron ran up to meet them, wearing his best wizarding clothes, sleeves yanked loose and rolled up all the way to his shoulders.

'Hey!' he called out, grinning. 'You guys hungry?'

'Ron, what—where did you get all this food?'

As if in answer to Hermione's question, a House Elf popped into existence right at Neville's table, and with a flourish placed in front of him a steaming plate of roasted vegetables, before disappearing again.

'I thought the Elves were refusing to—' Harry started, allowing himself to be jostled by Ron's forceful pat on his back. 'Oh wait, are they the Elves from Grimmauld Place?'

'Yep, that's where our kitchen is,' Ron said, then pulled on Hermione's hand to lead them to the nearest free table. 'I was in Hogsmeade this morning, I don't know if Hermione's told you, we're thinking of opening up shop there, now that business is doing well—anyway, I ran into some Hogwarts students and heard of the little revolution you've got going on here. And I had this idea—I wasn't sure how it was going to work out, hence the, uh, unique location. But it's got atmosphere at least, doesn't it?'

'Heaps of atmosphere,' Snape confirmed acerbically. His eyes were trained on the Basilisk. It was, Harry thought now, _exactly_ as big as he'd remembered it.

'Oh, Ron, I mean,' Hermione stuttered, shifting uncomfortably on the chair he'd pushed her into, 'this is a nice idea, but—well, the point of the strike is that the Elves are refusing to work for Hogwarts until something is done. It doesn't really work if we're just getting some other Elves to do that same thing—'

'Ah, but they're not working for Hogwarts!' Ron pressed a menu into Harry's hand. 'I've given them the idea, but it's their business, really. Oh, with the menu, if you see something on there you like, hurry up and order, they're constantly changing it.'

Harry indeed saw that the golden ink in the _Desserts_ section scattered suddenly, as if someone had blown on it when it was fresh, and then transmogrified from _Pumpkin Pie_ and _Biscuits_ to _Chocolate Cake_ and _Fruit Salad._

'I'll have the salmon,' Snape said curtly, in a tone meant to convey he cared about the food and was otherwise unsubscribed from the conversation. Harry could tell he was listening to every word.

'Salmon's—two seals. If you don't have family crests on you, you can exchange your currency right here with me.'

In perfect concert, Hermione gasped and Snape scoffed.

'You have me confused with Potter if you think I have _family crests,_ Mr Weasley—'

'Crests!' Hermione shrieked over him. 'They're getting paid, and they're getting paid in _their own currency_ —Ron, you do realise this is unprecedented? You do realise that?'

'I guess,' Ron scratched at his chin, suddenly shy. 'I mean, me, Draco and Neville have been making the seals with our own crests, and I was thinking that the money from selling them to people, we could just put back into a fund or something. I'm pretty sure this is some economics nightmare, but I'm hoping we're not going to, like, destroy the whole market, since it's small-scale and all.'

'This is—oh my God, this is amazing—'

Harry patted her on the back, with a swell of feeling for her. 'Breathe, Hermione,' he reminded.

'Oh, who cares about breathing?' Hermione laughed wetly. 'I can't believe you've done all this—'

'Well, riding on that wave,' Ron shifted, 'I've also spoken with Ginny about this whole thing. I mean, before today, before all this. And she's spoken with Fleur about it, and Fleur knows this woman in France who's working in Elf rights or whatever, Augustine something—'

'Augustine Gérard?!' Draco leaned away to the side, wincing at the volume. Hermione didn't seem to notice. 'She is _so_ influential—'

'Yeah, well, she's kind of told her about you and the article in the Prophet that's coming out, and the Elves in Grimmauld and all that,' Ron said. 'And she wants to meet you. And it's not like, I mean, yeah, she knows Fleur, but they're not best friends or anything, so it's not a favour, it's just that she thinks what you're doing here is interesting—don't kill me, I didn't ask her to do it.'

Hermione swallowed. She looked overwhelmed in every possible way, to the point that she'd become unable to look anybody in the eye. 'I'm not going to kill you, Ron,' she sighed. 'Thank you. I—I'll meet with her.'

'Well, yeah, obviously,' Draco said, seemingly lost. 'Why wouldn't you?'

'She's got issues,' Ron said, waving a hand at him. 'You wouldn't understand, mate, on account of, like, the money and the arrogance and all.'

Hermione laughed again. Draco looked a little offended, but he didn't argue.

'I should go thank Neville,' she said, wiping her eyes. 'Uh, Ron, can you just give everyone however many seals—I'll cover it, okay?'

Ron upended a satchel of seals onto the table. 'Help yourselves,' he said. 'We'll be back, yeah, Harry?'

'Sure,' Harry said, already thinking of a way to force the money back on Hermione later.

He watched the pair of them walk away, arms threaded and steps swaying.

'I don't have a family crest, by the way,' he told Snape, trying and failing to tear his eyes away from his friends.

'What do you mean, you don't have a family crest?' Draco asked. 'The Potter crest, it's like this squiggly thing with a lion—no, is it a tiger?'

'It's an owl,' Snape said. 'Easy mistake.'

'Well, good to know,' Harry bit out. 'That's new information to me, so thanks.'

'How do you seal your letters then?' Draco grappled.

'Uh, I find that a _seal_ works pretty well for that.'

'Enough,' Snape cut in. 'Gringotts will have a Potter seal for you somewhere. You'll go ask and soon you'll get to be as obnoxious as Mr Malfoy here.'

They were quiet after that, aware they were unlikely dinner pals but too awkward to acknowledge it. Eventually, Harry and Snape's food arrived, and Draco wandered off to join another table: Harry didn't recognize anyone there and it seemed Draco didn't know them all that well either, but they were clearly preferable to previous company.

Hermione and Ron returned to sit with them for a while, and brought Neville, who steadfastly avoided acknowledging Snape's presence, which made the conversation more than a little stilted. Still, Harry asked about their upcoming NEWTs, and how they were feeling about them, and then said, surprising even himself,

'I was thinking of just studying on my own and taking them with you guys. You can do that, right?'

'Harry, I—right! You absolutely can,' Hermione shook off the fluster. 'But I thought you wanted to come back to Hogwarts next year?'

'I don't think that's such a good idea, to be honest,' Harry said, the plan taking shape just as he was saying the words. When he spoke, it sounded as if he'd genuinely thought this through, even though it had been months since he'd last considered his future. 'It won't be the same anyway. None of you will be here, for one. But I still want to be an Auror, so I've got to take the NEWTs somehow.'

'I can lend you my notes on Herbology,' Neville offered. 'And I have a good book on Charms that's helped a lot.'

'You could revise with us,' Hermione's eyes shone. 'I can help get you caught up on Transfiguration, and you have access to a Potions lab, of course, and then with Defence, well, you don't need any help with that—'

'You will most certainly fail, so that sounds like a waste of everyone's time,' Snape said.

'Thanks for the encouragement,' Harry snapped. 'Just what I needed to hear.'

'I am contributing a much-needed dose of realism to the conversation. You have been out of school for nearly two years now, and even if it were possible to cram this much knowledge and skill into just over two months, you lack the work ethic to achieve that feat.'

Ron bit his lip to stop the snort. Harry shot him a dark look.

'Alright, well, how about I study all of next year,' he proposed, 'and then take the NEWTs. Would that be achievable with my work ethic?'

'Possibly.'

'I'll tutor you, Harry,' Hermione promised. 'After each exam, I'll get you the questions and we'll go over them—it's really best you start as soon as possible. You should decide now if you'd prefer to focus on one subject at a time or move between them for variety—I'll come up with some ideas for you, if you like.'

'Thanks, Hermione,' he said, exchanging a knowing look with Ron, and felt for a moment right at home.

Neville left after that, clearly uncomfortable in Snape's presence, and Hermione and Ron went to chat with some new students who'd shown up. Harry watched them from his seat, feeling warm and content and a little sad for the way things used to be, but in a way that only tingled pleasantly on the back of his neck. _I still want to be an Auror_ , he thought to himself. The statement rang in his head, over and over: he had forgotten it, he realised, or maybe he'd been afraid that the want would be gone the moment he tried looking for it. But it was still there.

Ron was laughing at something, head thrown back. Harry couldn't tell what the joke had been, he was too far away, and that squeezed at his stomach; until he imagined, one day, having Ron and Hermione over for Butterbeer again, to celebrate that he'd got accepted into the Auror department.

Then, for a flicker, he saw a different scene altogether: Ron slipping, now, on the wet floor, falling backward straight onto the Basilisk's corpse, where a forgotten tusk lay hidden among the ruin of flesh too long preserved with dark magic. The fang went into his back, and it put a stop to his laughter. Hermione was crying.

_I don't want that_ , Harry thought.

'Hey,' he said, not looking at Snape. 'You don't read my mind, do you?'

'I have very little interest in the inanities of your daily thought process.'

'So you don't do it.'

Snape gave an exasperated sigh. 'No, Harry, I don't read your mind, because as I have explained to you, Leglimency is not mind-reading—'

'So you _do_ read my mind?!'

'I do _not_ read your mind.'

'Leglimise me, then, whichever.'

'I do not Leglimise you either. Are you done now, or do you have more baseless accusations?'

'It's not that I have so much to hide or anything,' Harry hastened to clarify. 'But it's basic privacy. And also, you might see some things that aren't true. You know, I don't always mean what I'm thinking.'

'I'm glad to hear you are capable of some human complexity.'

'I just thought maybe you were doing it to, I don't know, make sure I wasn't thinking of stealing your coffee or—or—cutting myself up again or something.'

Snape's gaze sharpened. 'Have you?'

Harry squirmed a little. 'I mean, I think about it sometimes,' he admitted. 'But not—not like I'm about to do it or anything. Because I don't, but there are times when I can't help but think things—even things I don't want to think about, or do, or anything.'

'Well,' Snape cleared his throat. 'In that case, it sounds to me as if I've been sparing myself a lot of unnecessary stress.'

Harry mulled it over for a moment. 'Do you think it means something? When you can't help but think about something, even though you feel like you don't want to?'

'I don't know, Potter,' Snape sighed again, already tired of the topic. 'Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. Most thoughts, I would say, are complete and utter nonsense, so I wouldn't read too much into them. I've glimpsed those of a great many people over the course of my life, and if I put any stock in them, I would have long ago deemed humanity a lost cause.'

'Yeah,' Harry said, and thought of the fate he'd just imagined for Ron. 'If we're ever running low on convicted murderers, we should just have you Leglimise people as you walk down the street.'

'If thinking about murder equalled committing murder, I assure you much of this school's population wouldn't have lived to see this day. I would have made sure of it.'

'Aw. Would I be alive, at least?' he asked, and thought of the Basilisk again, and the way just the memory of the nightmare put a flare in his chest.

'You would have been the first to go,' Snape assured him. 'I would have drowned you in your pumpkin juice at your very first Welcoming Feast. It would have been extremely painful and extremely violent.'

'Shudder,' Harry said, and then for a while thought of nothing at all.

**THE END.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is it! A huge thank you to everyone who's been following the story. I know these past few months have been difficult for us all; but being able to share this with you has been a great source of positive energy for me.
> 
> Is this the end for _Mason Jars? _I don't know. I am not planning on writing a part three in the immediate future, but I do have some ideas for it. So, it's a "we'll see" more than a definite yes or no :)__
> 
> I am currently working on another fic, which is completely separate from Mason Jars and quite a bit different. It is still centred around a platonic/parental Snape-Harry dynamic, so if that's your jam, definitely check back in when it's out! I am hoping to publish the first chapter sometime in the second half of November; if I don't manage it, I'll be sure to post an update on my profile.  
>   
>   
> 


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